Religion Dispatches
…rofessor Rashid should not attack the Community for assuming the mantle of American Muslim leadership when other American Muslims have remained timid or silent on these issues. Second, Professor Rashid contends that the American Muslim community is represented by a diverse range of organizations, and it is this very diversity that makes it difficult for any one Muslim organization to speak with any authority. Professor Rashid is correct to point o…
Read More…mself put it, an understandable sense of suspicion and distrust that black Americans, particularly black Americans of Wright’s generation, hold toward the nation. But Wright does not offer a jeremiad. His words evoke not King’s dream, but a rather different set of religious voices from American history that have denied the nation’s fundamental promise. William Lloyd Garrison called the nation “diseased beyond the power of recovery,” and famously b…
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…researchers share the unsurprising finding that “young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans.” What they may mean to say is traditional religious practices: weekly attendance at religious services, weekly scripture reading, daily prayer, and weekly meditation. (My guess is as good as yours on the greater expected frequency of prayer in the survey.) The Pew survey design is problematic—and this is wher…
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…er of languages, economic classes, ethnicities and cultures represented in American Catholic churches, American Catholics resist singularity. And it follows that they are going to be inconsistent in how they define mercy, as the hierarchy of the American church is often wont to demonstrate. Even the variety of American “Mercy Doors” found online defies comparison to the huge, ornately carved bass doors Francis pushed open at St. Peter’s when he de…
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…to Allah as “Satan.” According to him, Groening received a subscription to American Renaissance magazine at the office. American Renaissance is published by white nationalist Jared Taylor, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the magazine and Web site “regularly feature proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists.” Taylor’s New Century Foundation, which runs the magazine, “also sponsors American Renaissance conferences ever…
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…e interfaith movement. Despite Galef and Speckhardt’s serious concerns and reservations, they have been actively involved in intentionally interfaith efforts, and I suspect their participation has informed their conclusions about the idea. However, those speaking out against atheist involvement in the interfaith movement are, at the moment, a bit more numerous (just a couple of examples, with several others to follow). As far as I can tell based o…
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…nd insights probably tell us more about the power and place of religion in American society than any of these others. Second, American historians have written extensively about Du Bois but have basically ignored his interest in religion. I felt shocked to read book after book about The Souls of Black Folk that focused on the word “folk” in the title but not on “souls.” This struck me as a blind spot in the profession. And lastly, in 2002 I was a f…
Read More…entury church completing an aggressive transition from regionally-specific American theocracy to a global institution. It’s a transition that has costs, very human ones, as Mormons concerned with the status of LGBT members, or women, or with growing rates of disaffiliation among young people will tell you. Recent surveys of Church members have linked rising rates of youth disaffiliation to increased internet access and information about thorny his…
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…’s living room—new disciples, new apostles. With that entirely appropriate number, a church began. At the first service, Perry tried to describe the church. He announced that while it would “serve the religious and spiritual and social needs of the homosexual community of greater Los Angeles,” it would soon “reach homosexuals wherever they might be.” Perry then “made it clear that we were not a gay church, we were a Christian church.” This may sou…
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…ingly immigrants and people of color. Catholic churches with ties to Latin American progressive traditions, African-American Protestant churches with roots in the Civil Rights movement and white Protestant churches in the social gospel tradition bring a very different standard for what it means to care for the community. While he was working with OUR Wal-Mart in California, Jones met a young Latina woman, a Wal-Mart employee, who was pregnant. The…
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