Religion Dispatches
…ued and even embarrassed by some of the movement’s more outlandish antics. Charles Mitchell, who blogs at evangelicalsformitt.com but is not formally affiliated with the Romney campaign, said, “We don’t just want you to get up there and pound your foot and say, ‘I’m pro-life!’ ‘Let’s go after gay marriage!’” He also said that evangelicals like him are frustrated by publicity stunts like Judge Roy Moore’s defiance of a court order to remove a Ten C…
Read More…th Estate, some of whom see theological consequences. Just a few days ago, Charles Krauthammer wrote the following: There must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies. Perhaps he is right. But I have my doubts about the “shortly and surely” part, because cause-and-effect and other human intu…
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…ter”: he’s used it to describe celebrated playwright Harold Pinter, Prince Charles, Howard Dean, and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. And, on Monday in Slate, to characterize Mormonism as well. In fact, to hear Hitchens’s take on Mitt Romney’s religion, Mormonism might be the sinisterest of them all. Essays like Hitchens’s recycle old images of Mormon mindlessness, manipulation, and sinisterestness. No doubt, America is far from being done with it…
Read More…c ideas — such as a young earth creationism — that were discredited before Charles Darwin was born. Although I am neither a fundamentalist nor an evangelical (and although I have not read their recent book on the subject), Giberson’s and Stephens’ distinction strikes me as fair and well-drawn. I know and have known a number of evangelical Christians who do not deny evolution. There is some evidence that the evangelical world may be softening their…
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…ars. The bishop of London, a very establishment figure (a friend of Prince Charles no less), has been mocked for his patronizing attempt at conciliation: telling the protesters that the Church was doing important work on the issue, and that if they disbanded, he would organize a debate between them and the bankers. The left-leaning papers have expressed astonishment that the Church walked into such a major public relations disaster, and provoked t…
Read More…of Los Angeles. Mother Teresa had written to Judge Lance Ito on behalf of Charles Keating, prior to Keating’s sentencing. Keating had just been convicted of defrauding 17 people out of $900,000, although in the letter Mother Teresa claimed not to know anything about the details of the case. She simply stated that he had given generously to her order, and ask that the judge look into his own heart and ask what Jesus would do. Although her letter w…
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…t and redemptive nonviolent action. But there were two problems: (1) large numbers of Occupiers “don’t know much about history” and thus had no idea who was in their midst, and (2) large numbers of MSM people “don’t know much about history,” either, and thus found it possible to treat the Elders’ declaration and direct involvement as not worthy of their notice. 9. We Can’t Just Call it Nihilism? Of course, we don’t expect mainstream religion write…
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…ery Henry Wallace there’s a Herbert Hoover, for every Tom Harkin there’s a Charles Grassley. Still, the shrill voices coming from the hard right in Iowa this year serve as a reminder that the state has changed in the years since I left. The rise of the religious right, with its opposition to gay rights and its advocacy of homeschooling, has created a hothouse and tempered the state’s proud tradition of progressivism, evident most dramatically in t…
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…claw on the carpet” while being dragged from the past; retired bishop Otis Charles and his husband Felipe; and Bishop Tom Shaw, an openly gay celibate Episcopal monk. But the crowd favorite at the DC screening I attended was Bishop Barbara Harris, whose 1989 consecration as the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion also shook up the church. Harris is memorably direct. About the idea that Robinson is the first gay bishop, Harris snorts, “Gi…
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…ver; it was not unusual for the cords to cut literally to the bone. Henry Charles Lea, author of the groundbreaking A History of the Inquisition of Spain, quotes at length from the “passionless, businesslike” report of the recording secretary: One cord was applied to the arms and twisted [….] She was told to tell what she had done contrary to our holy Catholic faith. She said “Take me from here and tell me what I have to say—they hurt me—Oh my ar…
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