Religion Dispatches
…re more moral people, they’d be rich. The scandal of American Christianity today is that it is deeply divided not only about issues like biblical inerrancy and evolution, but it’s deeply divided between a conservative vision of Christianity that emphasizes that what really matters morally is personal morality, the behavior of individuals. Much of that is focused on what I call the ‘loin issues,’ the issues of gender and sexuality. Social values ar…
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…n have gone unanswered. Over at the evangelical flagship site Christianity Today, Andy Crouch opined how the real problem here isn’t plagiarism but the fact that much of the work attributed to celebrity figures in the Christian world today is not their own. But the glaring fact remains that plagiarism is a very serious offense that in non-evangelical settings often results in loss of employment. Yes, in secular circles, author/speakers with star p…
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…ughout his campaign, often more dramatically than he did with Christianity Today. Just last month, in an address at Liberty University, Carson inveighed against the secular progressives “who are trying to push God out of our lives.” “Let me tell you,” Carson continued, “our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world…is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation. And the real question is: Are…
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…changes in US evangelical discourse. RFMH is a production of Christianity Today (CT), a magazine that has long been a central player in evangelical culture. CT emerged through the combined efforts of figures like famed evangelist Billy Graham, who sought new ways to bring a conservative, anti-communist form of Christianity to the masses, and J. Howard Pew, scion of a prominent oil family seeking a platform to sell American Christians on libertari…
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…generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from original sin and to see the story of Jesus not as saving the sinful but as expanding their humanity.” Most of my controversy came from my fight for the rights of gays and lesbians. Once I was convinced of the holiness of gays and lesbians, I ordained the first openly gay man with a partner in 1989. That’s a long time ago in this battle. It was cove…
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…long considered quintessential “outsiders” to mainstream American culture, today find themselves at the center of the American zeitgeist. Yet it is the Mormons’ supposed theological weirdness that is the centripetal attraction. As Joanna Brooks has noted in these pages, the New York Times recently featured Harold Bloom’s musings on how a President Romney would govern a country, and a planet, from which he would in the afterlife depart, becoming th…
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…of progress. “I’m deeply encouraged by the movement made in the Convention today,” lawyer, abuse survivor and SBC advisor Rachael Denhollander told the Houston Chronicle. “Ed Litton’s character and positions give me hope that significant positive change is possible for the denomination.” Indeed, Litton agreed to an independent audit of the SBC’s handling of sexual abuse issues, a move Southern Baptist author and speaker Daniel Darling lauded in hi…
Read More…will judge us all very, very harshly. I think the people who vote for this today, and in the future… will on this issue, not be so proud and there may be some justifiable shame there as well.” The attempt to shame marriage equality opponents in the present is a sore point for people like Maggie Gallagher at the National Organization for Marriage who complained they are being painted as a “bigot who is opposed to interracial marriage.” The fact tha…
Read More…wax a little melancholy as the ending of this auspicious month approaches. Today, I returned to my solitary suhur, then walked beneath the canopy of trees toward the mosque for morning prayer and muraqabah, or meditation. The stars were still shining like brilliant diamonds in the deep dark sky. I did search for a glimpse of the moon, so I could check our progress toward the final day, but alas, he was not visible between the tall trees. Or perhap…
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…ng 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 certainly more Asians, more South Asians, more people from the Middle East, portrayed on television today, as compared to when I started out. But in Hollywood, Caucasian is still the norm. Your heroes are still Caucasian. So that is somewhere we need more diversity, in terms of who’s creating the…
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