Religion Dispatches
…courts for more than a decade. We used the internet to regroup and grow in numbers. The Church even developed its own web-based resources to acknowledge and address its own controversies—historic and contemporary. This, we thought, was a good sign. A sign that might not need to fear losing our membership, our place, in a cherished tradition, just for having and voicing questions, doubts, and differences. We told ourselves to not to be afraid. And…
Read More…h coming from even the most outspoken anti-Muslim public figures (both political and religious) maybe the whole mess will serve to dial back the Islamophobic rhetoric a bit. The Wall Street Journal has reported that “residents of Gainesville are trying to get the word out that the actions of one tiny church don’t reflect the city. Along the main drag, businesses are putting up signs such as ‘We Support Tolerance’ and ‘Do Not Impose Your Beliefs on…
Read More
…social milieu. We also know that, across human history, there have been many societies with different sets of values, which have produced very different types of people. While I think that your book is a sharp and comprehensive look at the 16 motivations in many of the people that you’ve surveyed, I can’t buy that this is universal—that there haven’t ever been places and times where people had very different motivations associated with their cult…
Read More
…o-life, conservative state. Senator Crain’s office did not return repeated phone calls, but according to The Daily Beast, he “said the bill is simply a statement that Oklahoma is ‘pro-life.’” Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman said much the same thing, according to Reuters, offering that “Oklahoma is a conservative pro-life state—we are proud to stand up for what we know is right.” Well, yes, it feels very good to be proud of things, doesn’t it? Might I…
Read More
…way before efforts to repeal the so-called “fidelity and chastity” rule. Many folks mark the 1974 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church as the beginning of the movement for LGBT equality in the denomination, when David Bailey Sindt held up a sign asking, “Is anyone else out there gay?” Part of the reason for 10A’s success this year is the answer to that question: Yes, there are gay people out there. As Rev. Tricia Dykers-Koenig, national o…
Read More…nti-marriage-equality campaign. High-ranking Church leaders even scheduled phone calls with individual members to make the ask in person. Did Church leaders solicit an individual contribution from you to the Yes on 8 campaign or any other anti-marriage-equality initiative? If so, how did you respond? How would you respond in such a situation? 2. Mormonism is an openly patriarchal religious culture—one of the most patriarchal modern cultures on th…
Read More
…a, was murdered as he was leaving a book fair in Dhaka. His wife, author Bonya Ahmed, was severely injured in the attack. Within six months, three more secularist bloggers would be murdered. In 2016, these attacks have continued and widened in scope. Recent attacks have claimed religious minorities—including Christians, Hindus, Sufis, and Shias—professors, students, LGBT activists, and even the wife of a police investigator. While the attackers ma…
Read More
…ory of ritual practices—will have to be found elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God knows, while Glenn Beck rants in Twitter-like aphorisms condensing David Barton’s execrable version of history to a huge listening audience, and while Christian triumphalists fight to make their version of history the official one in textbooks, there’s plenty of room for reasoned, researched, and temperate documentaries. There’s a valuable publi…
Read More
…oppressor of Christianity, in the view of the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who tweeted that “#Obamacare seems aimed squarely at dismantling and/or silencing the family and the Church.” Billy Graham (or, as many suspect, someone speaking on the 94-year-old evangelist’s behalf) put his name on an advertisement that reads, “I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman,…
Read More
…And commenter Karen West writes: “Lila has the beauty and brains to do any number of things, but instead, she is laying down her life for those most innocent of all.” But not everyone on the religious right believes that Lila Rose is acting out God’s will, let alone laying down her life. After all, Lila Rose lies in order to get the footage she seeks. She and her colleagues pose as underage pregnant teens, as sex traffickers, as statutory rapists….
Read More