Religion Dispatches
…Having a husband meant that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not Denzel. It’s Jesus. For many women in churches like COGIC, being in love with Jesus means that most other men, whether desirable as a husband or not, stood in the way of the number one relationship. One person I interviewed even had a name for it: “being loosed” from your husband to do the Lord’s work. “Bein…
Read More…hington, D.C., offices of the Human Rights Campaign to hold a press conference denouncing homosexuality as “a destructive sin [and] something to be ashamed of. Out-and-proud homosexualism – far from being a human right – is actually a human wrong.” Others, like David Lane who, writes for World Net Daily and is funded by the certified hate group the American Family Association, are writing op-eds calling for America to return to being a “Christian…
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…r of Americans losing compensated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” really starts humming. “The economy,” in the way that mainstream economists gauge it, and the economic well-being of everyday people has parted company for good. Po…
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…anity to a number of other smaller movements. What does the center’s existence say about the continued relevance of black religion, Christianity especially, in a cultural milieu that’s becoming more secular and averse to institutions? It reminds us of what Pew and other studies have showed us, which is that within the African American context, there isn’t the downward shift that we’ve seen in traditional, mainline denominations. Religious faith is…
Read More…d argue that religious conversion should bring with it certain behaviors, including regular church attendance, clearly many Americans call themselves evangelical because they subscribe to or at least identify with evangelical theology. And when they make it to a church on Sunday, they choose an evangelical one to attend. How else should they be seen but as evangelicals? The majority of evangelical voters are not supporting Trump, it’s true. But pl…
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…arge scale suburban flight, economic divestment, and governmental indifference experienced within many American cities—and especially within the poorer neighborhoods of those cities in the past one hundred years. Former industrial cities with once sizable populations of blue-collar African-American laborers were among the cities hit hardest by massive downturns in resources, as businesses and corporations relocated to better markets in the suburbs…
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…tear down bridges, instead of building those bridges for the Kingdom. Reconciliation is a funny thing that takes shape in a number of forms within opposing communities. But one thing I know is true: it does not start or end with victory in mind. Reconciliation is best lived when Kingdom, on Earth as it is in Heaven, is the main goal of faithful establishment. I would remind Mr. Perkins to remember a few of Jesus’ direct words. First, in Matthew 2…
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…of mind and opinion” with a religion amounting to “a refinement of the principle of resistance.” What’s most remarkable about the American Revolution is how a rebellion that had passionate religion at its heart was able, eventually, to give us total freedom of religion, including freedom from religion for those whom we might well regard as the ultimate Dissenters. Application to this year’s Independence Day commemoration: No, in July of 2014 we d…
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…went too far.” As Olga Khazan reported in The Atlantic, it’s upper middle-income voters who don’t qualify for premium subsidies but saw their health insurance rates rise substantially under Obamacare who are the most dissatisfied with the law. As conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt said on MSNBC Tuesday evening around the time I began gulping bourbon like it was La Croix: I think Obamacare is the untold story here. I think it just clobbered peopl…
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…g with Benjamin Strack and the couple’s three children, all dead. The announcement concluded that the parents’ deaths were suicides, and that the couple had killed the two youngest children. The way the eldest child died, a 14-year old boy named Benson, remains, according to the AP reports, “undetermined.” Why would Benjamin and Kristi Strack kill themselves and their children? The short answer: a “pending apocalypse.” But beyond that, no details….
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