Religion Dispatches
…eria was Egypt’s fate, or whether something worse is around the corner. In Today’s Zaman, I argued that Pakistan might be the more operative analogy. With weapons flowing in from Qaddafi’s looted cache, plus an army that according to Wikileaks is “no longer capable of combat,” it’s unclear how said military can secure the country, regain control of the Sinai—a thousand times harder after what happened yesterday—or hold its end of the bargain up wi…
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…Apostle and Prophet Ezra Taft Benson, who continues to be read and re-read today. A tireless anti-Communist crusader and admirer of the John Birch Society, Benson’s packaging of the message parallels Skousen’s right down to the racial affronts (he claimed that the civil rights movement was a “tool of Communist deception”). And while the Church could distance itself from Skousen, it could not (and still cannot) from Benson. Moreover, Benson’s jerem…
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…gelical, a ministry aimed at helping women heal from religious patriarchy. Today Jennifer is an ordained pastor and leading evangelical feminist voice who is working to dismantle patriarchy in the church, pressing old-school leaders to back policies that advance women’s access to family planning services and advancing a conversation among women of faith who face hurdles to gender equality. The third and final thread follows LGBT students at the ul…
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…blical requirements, however, he did not view it as inherently immoral. By promoting McDowell, and by extension Rushdoony, Barton promotes a “biblical worldview” in which slavery is in some circumstances acceptable. This worldview (like his discussion of the three-fifths rule, which minimizes the rule’s dehumanization of slaves) diminishes the dehumanization of slavery in general by explicitly arguing that God condones it in certain circumstances….
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…raged these efforts, cited the polls, and at times even commissioned them. Today, when media outlets talk about “evangelicals,” they almost always mean white, politically conservative, born-again Protestants, unless they specify otherwise. The problem is that theological definitions of what makes someone an evangelical vary widely—and tweaking them, Wuthnow shows us, can generate substantial changes in poll results. Nobody actually agrees on the b…
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…Islam propaganda they will encounter from groups like TTT. 6. Get Involved Today’s public school students need to be prepared to function effectively not only in a global society that is already religiously diverse, but also in a United States that is growing more so. Since religions continue to shape human viewpoints and motivations, students need a solid grasp of the religions of the world. One thing I learned from participating in the 2014 text…
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…Western-style political leaders like the Shah. We live in that world still today, and it is in this sense that we did not need the September 11 attacks to learn that a certain form of neotraditional religiosity was alive and well around the world. What happened in the new century, and what has taken up a great deal of our cultural attention in the past decade, is that certain forms of neo-traditional religion became increasingly violent, very fas…
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…ore. More than that, the nature of everyday life for most of us in America today is deadly for the world around us. The machines that facilitate our daily life exploit the fossil fuel spoils of the underworld, slowly turning the planet into a kind of living hell. Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose knew that, even if many of us choose to ignore that it’s happening; phenomena like mass species extinctions are affecting us deeply. Rose argued that in t…
Read More…istory, there have always been rivulets of Jews who accept Jesus, and that today’s messianics perpetuate these, when the outside monies they now attract started burgeoning only suddenly in the 1970s, as the turn of the millenium neared, with its recurring hope for the Second Coming and even the end of the world.” When, he asks, “in previous history have rivulets of Jewish messianics received such largesse?” He concludes, “Today the mask is coming…
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…a,” he said, “because worldviews hardly ever change,” not much has changed today—except for Noebel’s expanded definition of communism. “We used to say communism equals Marxism-Leninism,” he told Olasky. “Now communism is a broader term—I have a whole list of things to add today.” The Democratic Party’s “Socialist Red Army” Noebel insists that President Obama is a “stealth socialist,” and even that Obama economic advisor Larry Summers, in acknowled…
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