Religion Dispatches
…igins of Totalitarianism, which he called “prophetic in its application to today.” Indeed the Manhattan Declaration itself, dressed up as a celebration of “life,” hauls out the trope that abortion is like genocide or holocaust, and claims that LGBT rights infringe on (real) Christians’ religious freedom. In his video released in conjunction with the Manhattan Declaration, Colson called the Declaration “crucially important for religious liberty,” a…
Read More…—something the study unequivocally does NOT provide. In fact, Christianity Today gave him a perfect opening to tell people to stop misrepresenting his findings, and he ducked it: What would you say to religious and political groups that promote traditional marriage and want to use the NFSS results to “prove” that parenting by same-sex couples is damaging to children? I am neither a theologian nor politically oriented, so I wouldn’t presume to tell…
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…ge, official church statements of support for organized labor were scarce. Today, many denominations have such statements and they could be used to hold clergy and laity alike accountable in the midst of labor disputes. Given that rates of religious affiliation vastly outstrip support for unions among Americans today, there is ample room for such accountability. One other constant bears mention here: because church life in America operates on a vo…
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…y reading them outside academia? The popular discussion about antisemitism today is sorely under-theorized. I just read an excellent new book, still in manuscript, by a young scholar on middle-brow Jewish writing in the mid 20th Century. One of the things she shows is that from 1945 to the early 1960s there were dozens of books written by rabbis and Jewish scholars about basic Judaism, such as Milton Steinberg’s Basic Judaism or Irving Howe’s Worl…
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…abor movement is solidly progressive. It has been the biggest single force promoting universal, government-supported health care coverage, protecting Social Security from Wall Street privatizers, and advancing a green jobs/green energy future. But that’s not all. The racist, jingoist, homophobic, misogynistic movement of American labor’s worst years—the George Meany/Lane Kirkland years—is long dead and buried. Today’s labor leadership is solidly a…
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…-called “Religious Right.” “What scares me is that Christianity in America today sees nothing wrong with being allied with political conservatism,” he told The Progressive magazine 10 years ago. “Conservatives are people who worship at the graves of dead radicals. Stop to think about that. The people who started this country, George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, these were not conservatives; these were the radicals of the time. In fact, conserv…
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…similation is never complete with any group, it certainly will not be with today’s immigrants either. They will change the culture, for better or for worse, just as their predecessors have—but I would say, they will change it likely to a greater degree because the initial gap is wider.” If people from different parts of the European continent “remain different all the way up until today,” he reasons, “what about people from different continents?”…
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…on us,” on the attitude chosen by the Jews. Even earlier, Gandhi told the Indian nationalist movement much the same thing: Their own choices had led them into suffering and only their own choices, not those of the colonizers, would lead them out of colonialism into independence. At a more philosophical level, both agreed that any situation, no matter how evil, could be turned toward the good if those who suffered the evil responded in a spiritual…
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…obally, stripped people of a practice vital to their health and community. Today, some researchers report that group drumming reduces anxiety and depression, increases social resilience and boosts the immune system, along with other physical and mental health benefits. “So this thing that was inherently happening in all tribal lineages was healing the very things that were hurting people,” says Pasquale Mateus, adding that they didn’t need science…
Read More…y this notion, the written word—published on the internet—gives them voice today. The change is momentous. Extremist and conservative women have had access to writing before, but due to the nature of publishing, this access was available to a relatively select few. Today, as we know, individuals educated in “textese” have ready access to the internet. Very little moderation blocks them from being “heard” by dozens or hundreds of people. Not only c…
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