Religion Dispatches
…s of the media and the entertainment industry.” And she warned the city of San Francisco, “overwhelm[ed]” by “the weight of sin,” that it would be “brought to your knees.” With their headquarters now in Jerusalem, God TV liberally draws on the trend in both the Word of Faith and apostolic and prophetic movements of “getting back to your Jewish roots.” The increasing embrace of Hebraic Christianity is often described as a desire to grasp the theolo…
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…o’s also “Barbie-fied.” According to legend, Correa attempted to cross the San Juan desert with her baby after becoming separated from her husband during the Argentine civil wars. When Correa’s corpse was discovered, her baby was still alive. Miraculously, her body was still able to supply her baby with milk even in death. A spokesperson for a sanctuary commemorating Difunta Correa claimed the saint’s image is copyrighted and threatened to sue. Pa…
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…nary.org): He (Dean Dunkle) once described Asian transit passengers in the San Francisco Bay area as “slanty-eyed.” In a large community meeting last spring, he compared the technical side of theological education to “looking up women’s skirts.” Before several faculty members and students, he spoke, as an obvious act of intimidation, of how “black people can do such interesting things with their hair,” a comment about which students complained. On…
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…erians, calling itself a new Reformed body. Their website reports they now number 127 congregations and 213 pastors. Most of these come from the PCUSA. Beyond my denomination, there is a growing rift and talk of a possible schism in the United Methodist Church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has lost approximately 600 congregations in the past few years. The Anglican Communion views the Episcopal Church of the United States with increa…
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…, murder of the unborn, redistribution of wealth and other evils have been sanitized and propagandized as “basic human rights.” Thus, when this arrogant man stands before the U.N. and decries those nations that refuse to embrace his special brand of pagan relativism, we shouldn’t be surprised if those nations push back. And so they push back. To be sure, in addition to triggering our own spike in angst, Obama’s fevered push to “call evil good and…
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…Though the community slowly established itself in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago, the reality for many Hindu immigrants—and their children—was that they were alone in a new country without much of a support network. My story is somewhat similar to Jindal’s. I grew up in small towns in New Jersey, New York, and Ohio before my family settled in the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1980s, and I was subjected to th…
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…and professor-with-flexible-leave-time Harrison Ford make their way to the sanctuary of an ancient temple, where they’re given a test: choose the real Grail from a collection of fancy cups. Glover chooses the fanciest one, drinks from it, and is disintegrated, like so: Then our pal Indy selects the smallest, dustiest vessel, saying, “This is the cup of a carpenter.” He uses his cup to save Sean Connery’s life, the Nazi lady dies, and a thousand se…
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…hbors and neighborhoods. From Seattle and Portland, Houston and Austin, to San Diego and Birmingham, Ala., Marion advises congregations about how their buildings can belong to the broader “parishes” that surround them. Writer and musician Jesse James DeConto, who works with churches in Durham, N.C., to host a monthly Beer & Hymns sing-along at a local brewery, recently talked to Marion about how churches can offer a ministry of presence through th…
Read More…, drug-smuggling and “free-love,” guru Baghwan Shree Rajneesh gathered thousands of followers to a headquarters in rural Oregon. Conflict with the natives yielded criminal charges against Rajneesh’s henchmen for wiretapping, arson, attempted murder and salmonella bioterrorism resulting in 751 cases of acute gastroenteritis. Paul Erdman went on an acid trip, changed his name to Love Jesus and founded a patriarchal commune in Seattle’s Queen Anne ne…
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…ndian community was fierce. *** Breanna grew up in an atheist household in San Francisco, but lately she’s been searching for something more. “I’m in a physics program right now, and the more advanced you get in this stuff, the more you have to just shrug and admit you don’t know. So I started casting out for something to follow, something that gave you more of an answer than ‘probably entropy,’ feel me?” She attended a Universalist church for a w…
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