Religion Dispatches
…dition, Austin attorney Brian Russell, whom board member Cynthia Dunbar recruited to run for her seat, lost his race to a moderate Republican. Dunbar, who is retiring, is a dominionist and has said public education is evil. Another conservative, Ken Mercer, is facing a serious challenge from a pro-education candidate in the fall election. Next year, just in time for the textbook review, the far-right Christian conservatives may no longer hold a ma…
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…are in this world know that this is ridiculous.” But that leaves him more frustrated. “The question is, whom do they fear? What world have we entered, and can’t we all admit that this is not working for God’s glory?” Why Isn’t She Married? When I ask Eric Metaxas if he thinks that this heavy-handed editing is happening more frequently to women, he rejects the idea outright. “It’s definitely equal,” he says. Metaxas—who later declines to give an ex…
Read More…ion ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin—the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vou…
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…dist, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist houses of worship. Suddenly, with stories in Fox News, Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and elsewhere, conservative media cast Rev. Turner as a front for Planned Parenthood. The National Director of “40 Days for Life” David Bereit told LifeSiteNews.com, “Planned Parenthood has stooped to a new low by exploiting pastors and churches to ‘celebrate’ the slaughter of babies made in God…
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…rickbats down on an early anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the streets of New York. A whiff of foreign-ness: From the 1890s onward a huge quantum of trade union energy came from new immigrant groups that brought their social solidarity with them to the new world. Jews and Italians, both already despised and feared, were foremost among these. Think Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Think Sacco and Vanzetti. So very scary and alien. Imagine tryin…
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…—who can track down a network of criminals intent on setting off a bomb in New York City. At least the threat isn’t implausible: New York’s the greatest city in the world, and Chicagoans need to stop trying. (As consolation prize, you can have the world’s number 2 pizza.) Of course, we don’t know if Cooper can do it. Cooper doesn’t think she can. But her boss believes the deskbound analyst has the potential to become a kickass field agent. Women e…
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…. Goldman, American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege (New York: New York University Press, 2012) and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Esalen Institute, a retreat center formed in 1962 near Big Sur, California, is at once on the margins and at the center of late modern American spirituality. Early spiritual experimentation at Esalen popularized prac…
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…d me in their spacious salon, while their son, Elik, prepared to travel to New York City, where he had accepted a faculty position to teach in the Jewish Studies Department at Columbia University.” There are actually three errors in this one sentence. Elik didn’t go to New York to accept a faculty position, he went as a graduate student. And he wasn’t in the Jewish Studies Department at Columbia University, which doesn’t exist,* he was in the Midd…
Read More…s a good thing, whether that is about global warming or evolution.” As the New York Times article suggests, the strategy’s roots are in the 2005 Cobb County, Ga. case, in which the school board there put warning stickers on biology books, saying evolution is “not just a theory, not a fact.” A judge struck down the warning stickers as unconstitutional because it unfairly targeted evolution for special scrutiny: After that, said Joshua Rosenau, a pr…
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…interpretations and who are dispensing their good advice. That’s not good news. Good news is, Jesus came to give us life so we would have it abundantly. He came so that we wouldn’t have to work, but could just be, that we could love him and love people and enjoy this creation that he’s given us. That’s good news. The rest of it is just advice. What does your future hold? We have open hands. It’s uncomfortable not knowing what’s next but we feel l…
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