Religion Dispatches
…some of the crass and narcissistic excess of a great deal of contemporary American religiosity; but also extreme interest in, and even a whiff of hope inspired by, the relentless creativity and imaginativeness with which Americans by and large apply themselves to the pursuit of their spiritual dreams. On the hopeful side of the ledger, I’d like to invite reflection on two things that a great many Americans seem willing to consider sacred, in L…
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…premacists and white nationalists and Christian nationalists have told the American story, right? Is they take things that they opposed in the past that are now a lost cause, and then act as if they were great ideas and they achieved everything that needed to be achieved. So all the people that hated MLK [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] when MLK was alive and was active and so forth, once it’s clear the impact that he had on the country—and obviously…
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…ich to live,” according to Wuthnow. Since the true threat came from within American life itself, it is hardly surprising that the communist threat was seen as much inside as outside the nation: “Americans feared that their fortress could be invaded at any time. They spent increasing amounts on national defense [and] built bomb shelters,” while at the same time they “searched for subversives in their midst.” It could hardly have been otherwise. Whe…
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…dation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the ACLU, American Atheists, the Center For Inquiry, the American Humanist Association, and others. The wall of separation is crumbling, though not from neglect. It’s being attacked. The Trump administration is rife with Christian nationalists attempting to rewrite the Constitution by revising American history and declare this a “Christian nation.” Betsy Devos, Mike Pence, Ben Carson…
Read More…dicted that 30,000 people would participate in the service, but the actual number appeared to number around 2,000. “Our prayers will open the sky and the homosexuals will fall, we will be blessed with victory,” said Lee Young-hoon, head of the leading organization in the anti-LGBT coalition. Mexico: Supreme Court embraces marriage, Church and some political officials resist As we have been reporting, the marriage equality movement has been movemen…
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…ministration overs its executive orders banning entry into the U.S. from a number of countries. Paul Harrison, an American man engaged to an Iranian man is among the individuals profiled: Like the other plaintiffs, the couple veer between dread and hope with each successive legal victory, each sign that the Trump administration will not relent. “We look at each other and we say, ‘Gosh, we don’t know whether we should laugh or cry at any given mome…
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…to get more upset about these things until I realized a couple of things. Number one, not everyone’s going to like you. Number two, engaging with these people in arguments is often fruitless. Number three, a lot of times they refuse to listen. And number four, a very small percentage of them are actually crazy. There’s a great scene in a movie called The Trouble with Angels from the 1960s. It’s about a Catholic girls’ school outside of Philadelph…
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…ing about meaningful reform on this issue is to change the terms of the conversation and alter the moral climate. Besides, the only thing that both sides of what currently passes for debate over abortion agree on is that making abortion illegal will not have a significant effect on the number of abortions. The developments at Regent University and the University of Notre Dame suggest that younger evangelicals understand that, as do a growing numbe…
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…e Common Good, favors making abortion illegal, and only views reducing the number of abortions as an interim step toward that goal. It is hard to take seriously a movement that thinks they can dramatically reduce the number of abortions while largely ignoring or denying the issue of access to contraception—including emergency contraception. One understands that they feel their hands are tied by the official position of the Catholic church against…
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…st half didn’t mention Coe, don’t include him. Well, Coe made the list, at number four, pictured with Bush, Sr., under the headline, “The Stealth Persuader.” The secret to his stealth is simple: In a city where everybody wants to be in the news, Coe isn’t seeking publicity. Way back in 1966, when he first began assuming leadership of the organization he’d come to re-brand as the Family, he sent out a memo declaring that the time had come to “subm…
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