Religion Dispatches
…nstant in that picture was African-Americans. Ours is the story still not well known, despite our numbers. For one thing, after September 11th we were given a small reprieve. American prejudice and intolerance floated from us as African Americans, who happen to be Muslim, and focused on Muslims who happen to be Americans. Therefore the hatred built up against foreign Muslims immigrant and their offspring. More than a few African-American Muslims w…
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…eek relief from enduring physical and psychological pain that seems infinitely unrelenting and others after severe bouts of depression. These teens, however, were not seeking relief from some persistent, internal state of depression or physical illness. The pain they faced had an external source: the cruel, unremitting, merciless pounding of daily humiliation, taunting, harassment, and violence. And all of this pain visited upon these young lives…
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…again entered the fray of religious controversy with a cover featuring “Rebel Priests” Phillip and Daniel Berrigan, the anti-Vietnam activists serving federal prison sentences for burning draft cards with napalm. Not to be outdone, Newsweek brought out an issue with the words “Has the Church Lost Its Soul?” emblazoned on its cover. Taken together, the Time and Newsweek Catholic stories of the late 1960s and early 1970s suggest that, after nearly a…
Read More…heir Christmas display in Florida. It featured a “Biblical image” of an angel falling into hell with the slogan “Happy Holidays from the Satanic Temple.” Temple spokesperson John Porgal explained he would prefer that no holiday displays were present at the capital. Meanwhile, Jex Blackmore and her group erected their “Snaketivity scene” on the grounds of the Michigan capital. The display featured a serpent and the slogan, “The greatest gift is kno…
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…was too obscure for most readers and I’m sure she was right. How do you feel about the cover? It nicely evokes the look of 1980s television and captures some of Jim and Tammy’s appeal. PTL was all about images so there were any number of options. Too bad books can’t come with a dozen different covers to choose from. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. T…
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…by much—of Christian communities in America affects politics, ecumenical relations, and inter-religious dialogue remains to be seen, but American Christianity today belies any notion of common ground or uniformity. Maybe it really is inaccurate to speak about “the Christians” or assume that those who self identify as “Christian” think alike or act in the same way—an inaccuracy, I would hasten to add, that exists in the same manner when speaking a…
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…of Ukraine and a stark, and extremely public reminder, of the West’s entirely unhelpful—and historically tone deaf—approach to Orthodox Christianity. The Pope’s decision to carry out the consecration service dates to a series of appearances of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima, Portugal between the spring 1916 and the autumn of 1917. During the appearance, the children received a series of propheci…
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…vidual rights. If they don’t know them, tell them to pick up George Whitefield. Tell them to pick up the sermons. They are available online. They are available in bookstores everywhere. The sermons that led to the American Revolution, on individual rights. Please, I beg of you. These people will take over the Internet. These people will destroy talk radio. These people will take Fox News off. But that commitment to individual liberty, and hostilit…
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…buse is any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world…
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…ed on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observes that while relatively few countries around the world criminalize irreligion as such, many impose arbitrary burdens on secular manifestations of conscience that are not experienced by others. These include laws and policies regulating: • apostasy and religious conversion; • blasphemy and religious criticism; • compulsory religious registration, usually with a government proscribed list…
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