Religion Dispatches
In the wake of James Dobson’s attacks on Obama’s Christianity, liberal evangelical Jim Wallis comes to the candidate’s aid. Is Wallis’ subsequent plea for a new Democratic position on abortion strategically timed?
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Why is the character of Jesus so powerful? Why is he such a hit? Bestselling writer Mary Gordon re-reads the Gospels, asking these questions, among others, and trying to figure out why fundamentalist readings of scripture, grounded in fear and rage, have come to dominate the understanding of religion in this country.
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Legendary underground comics artist R. Crumb has produced a surprisingly reverent Book of Genesis. For real grotesquerie, you need to look back to the Bible of Basil Wolverton, an evangelical illustrator whose work dwelt on the bizarre and violent.
Read MoreConservatives are fond of using scripture to support their arguments, and they are great at tapping the emotional heart of a story. Liberals, not so much.
Read MoreWould Christian employees be comfortable being forced by their employers to say Happy Hanukah or Happy Kwanzaa or Happy Ramadan to their customers?
Read MoreA standard misconception of the religious right is to privilege sexual “sins” over the sin of, say, a lack of economic justice for women. A story from Genesis 38 retold…
Read MoreWhat should be more offensive to a political candidate, a claim that God is fully in charge of history, or a claim that the biblical text, not human thought, is the source of truth? It’s the latter that violates the spirit of the first amendment…
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What do critics of Islam have in common with bin Laden? They both have a reductive, prescriptive understanding of religion and they use it to assert superiority over others.
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