Religion Dispatches
…, and Peterson Toscano, a man who went spent 17 years in an unsuccessful effort to change his orientation. Schumacher-Matos correctly points out that much of the negative reaction centered on the presentation of Wyler and Toscano as representative of two sides of a current debate in psychology. In fact, the official pronouncements of the mental health professions are clear that scientific evidence does not warrant psychologists telling a client th…
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…r nasty bugs that way, though.) Like the Trump administration’s bumbling efforts, these local responses to the current situation relate back to conceptions of truth on some level. On the one hand, while there’s a recognition of the coronavirus’ power, there’s a sense that it’s more important to preach a message of comfort or a word of judgment against the White House. On the other hand, there’s a denial of the reality, and a desire to demonstrate…
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…his avalanche of deservingly bad press. This Pope is a theologian, more comfortable wielding doctrine than dealing with the real people who practice the Catholic faith. His language is theological language, which just doesn’t work well with the media, the Muslim world, or with governments charged with upholding laws. The upshot of this is, this scandal is going to get much worse before it gets better. Despite the letter to Ireland, in which he bas…
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…w, while 55% of Americans as a whole have a favorable view of Israel, that number jumps to 80% among White evangelicals. And further, among evangelicals who support Israel, up to 50% have suggested End Times prophecies are part of their motivation. There are surely some whose uncritical support of Israel is motivated by End Times prophecies, though there’s significant disagreement on that point. What I would argue instead is that Christian Zionist…
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…s or have real ramifications for a democratic society infringes on that comfort. By the end of this study, I was shocked at the number of educated people I met who dismissed my work as a book on “freaks.” Ideally, I would like readers who dismiss this community to stop laughing, and readers who fear this community to perhaps smile. What alternative title would you give the book? So many books have been written about vampires that almost every clev…
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…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…
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…her to acknowledge Robertson’s latest provocation. It bores me, and I feel cheapened even to think about it as I worry about one of my students who has not yet returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Still I could not resist clicking on a list of Robertson’s top ten greatest gaffes that I found in the blogosphere. It was amusing to ponder the rankings. Does Robertson’s feat of leg-pressing 2000 pounds (thanks to the diet shakes he was selling) dese…
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…nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hit, a tsunami followed that killed those who had rushed to the beaches in fear to avoid the havoc of the earthquake. The cat…
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…an’t stop Muslims from building a mosque. You can hate Muslims from the comfort of your house, or publicly, but when that becomes stopping Muslims from building a mosque, or worshipping, then we are crossing the line into something else. How do you feel Hollywood deals with diversity—is it getting 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 c…
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…more effective if it were honest. And perhaps that would have lessened the number of death threats and other vile correspondences she has received. Second, others have said that she deserved the criticism for its political harm, that this hurts the Democratic party. Perhaps, but that doesn’t make much sense either, because the manufactured outrage made it worse. If a Democratic leader had privately contacted her and said, “Ilhan, you have to clari…
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