Religion Dispatches
…hies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies University of North Carolina Press, 2007 D. Michael Lindsay opens his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power, with a story of the joining of two worlds at a posh New York event. Hosted by Rupert Murdoch “in one of Manhattan’s most celebrated ballrooms,” the event feted Rick Warren—evangelical preacher and publishing sensation—bringing together the seemingly disparate worlds of urban sophisticat…
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…he Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World (University of North Carolina)—but don’t let it dissuade you from reading Anthea Butler’s new book. Butler writes about lower class African-American Pentecostal women, a sadly understudied group. Focusing on the experience of sanctification, and the concomitant “dedication to both spiritual practices and temporal obedience,” Butler looks at how belief shaped these women’s understanding of self,…
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…aders and whose “Impact Church” runs the Daniel Christian Academy in North Carolina, recently referred to “transgender acceptance” as a doctrine of demons. Such teachings about demons, tragically, can lead to psychological and physical assaults upon students—as I experienced firsthand at Liardon’s SLBC. A proud alumnus One product of NAR-influenced education is Brandon Burden, a prominent NAR leader in North Texas and a 1996 graduate of Liardon’s…
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…uages, became a mainstay of Zionist polemics. The phrase was utilized in a number of ways, some more sophisticated than others. While some advocates of Zionism used it to imply that Palestine was empty of people, that suggestion was contradicted by the reports of many Western visitors. The phrase was most pointedly used to claim that the Arabs of Palestine had no distinct Palestinian identity. They were ‘‘Arabs,’’ not a cohesive national group. Th…
Read More…mons who support it. First there’s the story of the Mormon couple in North Carolina who were ejected as leaders of a Boy Scouts of America Cub Scouts troop based at Christ Covenant Church (PCUSA). The Stokes weren’t fit to serve, the church said, because Mormons weren’t really Christians. And then went on to email church members a link to a webpage expostulating on how very un-Christian we Mormons are. How nice. Second, there’s the story about Nev…
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…ian ethos in black America. These theologically conservative communions outnumber and overwhelm the influence and theological visions of Christian traditions that are stereotypically progressive such as the United Church Christ and the United Methodist Church. The stark reality is that the overwhelming majority of black Christians have more in common, theologically, with Southern Baptists, the Church of God, and the Assemblies of God than with Epi…
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…at sometimes liberal religious activists take what they can get. The North Carolina Council of Churches is a member of the NC Together coalition that convinced the state legislature last year to raise sales taxes rather than just try to fill the budget hole with service cuts. “It was better to have a regressive tax shared by everyone than lose services,” said Rev. George Reed, the council’s director. This year, the council and statewide coalition…
Read More…s top speakers — including the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli — very happy. Some of today’s activities are slated to take place in the University’s basketball arena, which seats 10,000, and it would be remarkable if Liberty and/or Thomas Road aren’t able to send out an ABP to get some more warm bodies in the place. That the Summit conflicted with…
Read More…gainst the city and the mayor in U.S. District Court. Meanwhile, the North Carolina House of Representatives is rethinking its own prayerful opening to sessions. If your kids don’t have a clear picture of America as a “Christian nation” you can send them to Vacation Liberty School for lessons on “equal rights, not equal results,” “recognize men don’t create rights—only God,” and “understanding falsehoods of separation of church and state.” Angelin…
Read More…struction of a mosque in New York City to a race for the US House in North Carolina. Is that about the “limits of religious freedom” or attempts to squelch it? Beyond that, I tend to the absolutist when it comes to First Amendment guarantees. The “limits of religious freedom” are meaningless when they come in the form of, as Foxman put it, “positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.” Waving the bloody shirt of the Holocaust i…
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