Religion Dispatches
…ansition.” He still seems intent on holding the Republicans’ feet to the fire on the federal debt immediately, though: he’s launching a campaign to get Congress to refuse to vote to raise the debt ceiling in January, which, some economists believe has the potential to wreak havoc on the U.S. and world economy, and which promises to be the source of an intense political battle in the new year. …
Read More…environment around 2005, when there was a highly noticeable uptick in the number of services, prayer breakfasts, emails from chaplains, displays of crosses, and other evangelical activity that struck her as “excessive.” But what bothered Major Williams most was the Strong Bonds program, which she attended at an Orlando hotel in January 2008. Included in the Strong Bonds conference tote bag was a camouflage box with a New Life Ministries inscripti…
Read More…ourselves with arguments about their place. That’s why the debate about putting Jesus in Christmas or keeping him out rings a bit hollow; Christmas is celebrated on December 25th (or January 6th, or 7th, depending on your kind of Orthodoxy). It does not begin the day after Thanksgiving. At least that much is clear in Rome. …
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…Pakistan’s Punjab province. A Public Murder The assassination of Taseer on January 4 in the national capital Islamabad, by a bodyguard assigned to him, highlights how unresolved the issue of religion and the state is in Pakistan to this day. Rooted in the partition itself, Pakistan’s ambivalence about how involved the state should be in matters of religion is complicated further by military and intelligence agencies often at odds with both the dem…
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…Service or Labour may be due. As the 112th Congress convened on Thursday, January 6, 2011, the first order of business was a religious ritual designed to underscore the import of a historic transition of power: a reading of the US Constitution. Or rather, a reading of it without some of its ickier original parts, such as the original fugitive slave provision quoted above. It was constitutional fundamentalism without some of the fundamentals. Gove…
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…China, President Hu Jintao will visit a Confucius Institute in Chicago on January 21, 2011, after his meeting with President Barack Obama and a state dinner at the White House. After a stringent purging of Confucian teachings during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Confucius has been rehabilitated by the government. Books and TV programs about Confucian teachings have become hugely popular, making some authors millionaires. And less than a week…
Read More…r sparsely attended. In their newfound media savvy the Catholic bishops may want their own concert next year. They would do better offering good coffee and hand warmers. This was the 38th such March for Life. In all likelihood, there will be another one next January 22nd. But let’s call things by their names—a Catholic demonstration that is made to appear far more generic than it is. It reminds me of the theological sleight of hand that would have…
Read More…got Ted Haggard his special. Ted Haggard: Scandalous, which airs on TLC on January 16. The King James Bible turns 400 this year. Egyptian Muslims stood with their Coptic neighbors as a “human shield” against Islamist attacks. A “community healing” mass was held at St. Odiilia Church in Tucson, Arizona. It was the church where the 9-year-old shooting victim, Christina Green, had her first communion. A group of Trappist monks from Iowa built, engrav…
Read More…others will be supported during the upcoming National School Choice Week (January 23-29) in which Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (and director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition during the 1990s) will be joined by other conservative leaders in an eleven-city (Detroit, Phoenix, Los Angeles Cleveland, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Indianapolis, Pewaukee, WI; Sacramento and Newark), “Education Revolution Tour,” the goal of wh…
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…ay to reflect upon the quasi-eulogy President Obama delivered in Tucson on January 10, 2011. To be sure, the speech hit rhetorical high notes we haven’t heard since this president took the oath of office two years ago. And there is little doubt but that it has had the altogether salutary effect of damping down the rhetoric on both extremes of the political spectrum. Clearly, there’s no direct causal correlation between one person’s speech and anot…
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