Religion Dispatches
…onto them, or to control or exploit Muslim countries. They did not hate America’s freedom—they hated what they regarded as America’s attempts to control others and deprive them of what they regarded as their freedom from the West. In the same way, most Americans do not despise Muslim activists because of who they are—Muslims—but because of what they do. Bin Laden and his forces are thought to be evil because of their horrible acts of terrorism, no…
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…of “Nones” identified in a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion in American Life. Some 35 percent of the more than 7,000 Brits surveyed indicated that they had “a religious understanding of life.” The majority of these identified as Christian. Nineteen percent self-identified as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), while 46 percent described themselves as neither spiritual nor religious. American “Nones,” however, seem less inclined to embra…
Read More…remacy of God” as a first principle. Recently, it has seen a surge in Pentecostalism and other proselytizing strains of faith. Although bounded on two sides by Latin American countries with more liberal attitudes toward same-sex relationships, Belize retains a culture more closely aligned with Caribbean countries whose perspectives were colored by 200 years of British occupation. There is an ethos of “live and let live,” but only as long as the ga…
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…unted Warehouse.) The news of R.A. Montgomery’s death at 78 was met with a number of tributes and appreciations on the Internet. These books were huge in the lives of many American children and have even been seen as presaging the cultural shift to the Internet age, where audiences are no longer happy to passively consume content, but want interaction. The history of the books is intertwined with the history of the Internet. There’s also a somewha…
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…The Ottoman occupation of majority Orthodox Christian populations and historical Orthodox Christian territory is, in most cases, as recent or more recent than American chattel slavery. And only the ignorant or ideologically motivated (i.e. racist) would argue that American chattel slavery has no effect today. And the failure of the West to understand this recent history and to take it into account in the analysis of current events is the very open…
Read More…e for their unwillingness to put their reassurances in writing, proposed a number of amendments. So did other legislators, such that by the time SB-1433 was scheduled to be voted on, it was groaning under the weight of amendments. But the real turnaround came when Speaker Steele proposed an amendment to an amendment that, in essence, would have given teeth to the reassurances that the Oklahoma bill would do no more than the Missouri language. Tha…
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…-majority countries increased. Islam is part of the religious fabric of America. Islam is American. Yet, with a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump made Islam a foreign threat needing extreme “vetting.” Donald Trump and ISIS agree on this. It’s probably why ISIS celebrated Trump’s victory. For ISIS to thrive, it is essential to provoke America into a civilizational conflict. ISIS is, at best, a regional threat, but it has global aspirations. Through the…
Read MoreAccording to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…
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…llowing such a line of reasoning might mean we are seeing an uptick in the number of American’s who will report a life-changing Christian experience while simultaneously being less likely to identify with any particular Christian institution. This raises questions about the complicated relationship between Americans and their willingness to affiliate with large institutions (religious and otherwise) in general. The rate of decline in affiliation f…
Read More…l talk about the deeper roots of these things or attempt to explain why American culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level of…
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