Religion Dispatches
…re more moral people, they’d be rich. The scandal of American Christianity today is that it is deeply divided not only about issues like biblical inerrancy and evolution, but it’s deeply divided between a conservative vision of Christianity that emphasizes that what really matters morally is personal morality, the behavior of individuals. Much of that is focused on what I call the ‘loin issues,’ the issues of gender and sexuality. Social values ar…
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…n have gone unanswered. Over at the evangelical flagship site Christianity Today, Andy Crouch opined how the real problem here isn’t plagiarism but the fact that much of the work attributed to celebrity figures in the Christian world today is not their own. But the glaring fact remains that plagiarism is a very serious offense that in non-evangelical settings often results in loss of employment. Yes, in secular circles, author/speakers with star p…
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…ughout his campaign, often more dramatically than he did with Christianity Today. Just last month, in an address at Liberty University, Carson inveighed against the secular progressives “who are trying to push God out of our lives.” “Let me tell you,” Carson continued, “our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world…is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation. And the real question is: Are…
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…changes in US evangelical discourse. RFMH is a production of Christianity Today (CT), a magazine that has long been a central player in evangelical culture. CT emerged through the combined efforts of figures like famed evangelist Billy Graham, who sought new ways to bring a conservative, anti-communist form of Christianity to the masses, and J. Howard Pew, scion of a prominent oil family seeking a platform to sell American Christians on libertari…
Read More…wax a little melancholy as the ending of this auspicious month approaches. Today, I returned to my solitary suhur, then walked beneath the canopy of trees toward the mosque for morning prayer and muraqabah, or meditation. The stars were still shining like brilliant diamonds in the deep dark sky. I did search for a glimpse of the moon, so I could check our progress toward the final day, but alas, he was not visible between the tall trees. Or perhap…
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…generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from original sin and to see the story of Jesus not as saving the sinful but as expanding their humanity.” Most of my controversy came from my fight for the rights of gays and lesbians. Once I was convinced of the holiness of gays and lesbians, I ordained the first openly gay man with a partner in 1989. That’s a long time ago in this battle. It was cove…
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…ng better, or is it getting worse? We are definitely seeing more diversity today, in television and in movies. Probably more than we ever have. There are certainly more Asians, more South Asians, more people from the Middle East, portrayed on television today, as compared to when I started out. But in Hollywood, Caucasian is still the norm. Your heroes are still Caucasian. So that is somewhere we need more diversity, in terms of who’s creating the…
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…rsalism. This popular history underscores continuities between the work of today’s human rights defenders and previous citizens’ struggles for the rights of women, workers, immigrants, and formerly enslaved and colonized peoples, placing Malala Yousafzai shoulder to shoulder with Frederick Douglass and Mary Wollstonecraft. In Moyn’s narrative, human rights are no older than Generation X. The eighteenth century discourse of droits de l’homme or “ri…
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…ster will eventually come to the conclusion that engagement with believers today has to be both digital and mobile. Thus, I wasn’t surprised to read about an Anglican priest in Nova Scotia who offered a “grace for gadgets” service over Labor Day weekend during which the faithful had to opportunity to have their smartphones, laptops, and other mobile electronic devices blessed. In a similar vein, earlier this year, a Methodist church in Texas began…
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…anet is one of the sources of social and ecological ills around the planet today. This “fossil-fueled time,” has literally been constructed over the past century as the mining and use of fossil fuels have sped up the processes of transportation, communication, and production since the time of the Green Revolution after WWII, a period some sociologists refer to as “The great acceleration,” which has now led to the geological time known as the Anthr…
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