Religion Dispatches
…storm in black America.” The real story is not about marriage, its about money. The amount given in tithes and offerings by black women faithful to the scriptural admonitions is, I would surmise based on my historical observations, substantial. T.D. Jakes figured that out: he became a megachurch leader with “Woman Thou Art Loosed.” But many black women are anything but “loosed.” A March 2010 study by the Closing the Gap Initiative found that t…
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…John Paul II was as anti-modern a Pope as the Church has seen in recent memory; his successor even more so. But on the devilish topic of religion, science and free enquiry, these same Popes have elected to stand emphatically on the side of the moderns. This volume offers an extraordinary glimpse back on a time when it was not yet so. But it is so, now, in the Vatican Library and in the Museums, which can make them both seem very far away from a C…
Read More…tter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figure sum from th…
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…lf.” Talismanic objects such as ticket stubs and tour T-shirts are more common; most common of all are venerated images displayed on bedroom walls: on the Bowie fansite Ziggy Stardust Companion, an ardent fan named Madeline proudly displays a blurry snapshot of her “Ziggy wall.”10 (image, upper right). Wall-mounted photo collages are devotional aids—focal points for inner dialogues with the deity, daydreams, wet dreams, wish-fulfillment fantasies…
Read More…f the clergy sex abuse scandal, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the fi…
Read More…lping. I’m a preacher and I can say with near certainty that 99% of the sermons preached yesterday morning didn’t get close to the level of truth-telling that’s needed. Nor will the compulsory “thoughts and prayers” pronouncements, nor the words spoken at memorial services over the next days and weeks. Of course as a pastor I’m aware that words of consolation are appropriate and necessary at a time like this. But if actual truth-telling isn’t also…
Read More…movement emphasizes technological Utopianism and has advocated genetically modified food (GMO) as well as cloning, which they regard as a step toward immortality. They also support sexual liberation and have organized campaigns for a woman’s right to go topless in public. In 1997, Raelianism founded Clonaid, a company that claimed to be able to clone human beings. The project followed closely on media coverage of Dolly, a cloned sheep. Brigitte Bo…
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…se beliefs with others. These experiences and feelings keenly inform how individuals understand their lives and make commitments to others. Sexuality and religion may have a lot more in common than most people imagine. Neither has to be discarded or cast out to make room for the other. They can, in fact, be understood through each other. …
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…ME magazine’s Elizabeth Dias found the collaboration between evangelicals, Mormons, and Catholics notable: Skepticism about the other’s faith tends to run deep between Catholics, evangelicals and Mormons. In strict economic terms, the three faiths all compete for followers. They are heavily missionizing, and often they evangelize precisely in ways that distinguish themselves apart from the other faiths. But the Protestant work ethic runs deep in b…
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…e, we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface as a culture. We have so many more models of how men lead than we do for women. Even though women have always been leading, we’ve had so many more men in positions we recognize as leadership. I think this is changing, but when people look at me in an authority role, the experiences they’ve had with women shape how they see me. They may not know how to think about me because they don’t have a suitable te…
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