Religion in America
Archived Posts from this Category
Can Jews debate Jesus dispassionately? Should they?
Wall Street Opinion Journal Jordana Horn Friday, May 4, 2007
Interrupting the Intellectuals
“What’s He Doing Here?: Jesus in Jewish Culture.” An unusual conference title, to be sure, for what proved to be an unusual event on a beautiful spring Sunday in New York. Writers, critics, filmmakers and scholars gathered at the Center for Jewish History to discuss the man whom Leon Wieseltier termed “the world’s most famous ex-Jew.” The gathering was an intellectually illustrious one. Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt and poet Robert Pinsky were speakers on a panel coyly titled “Why I Think About Jesus.”
comments off Sunday 06 May 2007 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
‘Goldilocks’ faith serves lukewarm mush
Townhall.com | Michael Medved | April 25, 2007
When it comes to the issue of gay marriage, the Jewish Theological Seminary blinked and gave way to society’s shifting mores. So one must ask the question: Should we guide religion, or should religion guide us?
comments off Friday 27 Apr 2007 | Jacobse | Gay marriage, Religion in America |
You’re Dead, I’m Healing
Townhall.com Dennis Prager Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Within hours of the massacre of more than 30 people at Virginia Tech University, the president of the university issued his first statement on the evil that had just engulfed the college campus and concluded with this: “We’re making plans for a convocation tomorrow at noon in Cassell Coliseum for the university to come together to begin the healing process from this terrible tragedy.”
comments off Tuesday 17 Apr 2007 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
Why liberals are right to hate the Ten Commandments
Townhall.com Michael Medved February 28, 2007
The left’s fiery obsession with removing Ten Commandments monuments from public property throughout the United States may seem odd and irrational but actually reflects the deepest values of contemporary liberalism.
54 comments Thursday 01 Mar 2007 | Jacobse | Culture war, Politics, Religion in America |
America’s Secular Jihadists
Breakpoint Church Colson January 12, 2007
Atheists on the Offensive
Just a few months ago, I thought it was insulting to be called a “theocrat.” I was wrong. “Theocrat” is almost a compliment compared to what the Left is calling Christians now.
According to a New York Times review, we Christians are fascists—that’s what the Nazis were. And if we’re not stopped, we’ll try to take over America. It’s an illustration of how vicious the invective has become against faithful Christians.
6 comments Friday 12 Jan 2007 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
The real schismatics and bigots
Townhall.com Patrick J. Buchanan December 22, 2006
“I grew up in the Episcopal church. I hope I don’t cry when I talk about this. But the issue is: Are we going to follow Scripture?”
So an anguished Katrina Wagner, a member of the leadership of Truro Episcopal parish, told Washington Post reporters Bill Turque and Michelle Boornstein. They have been covering the sad Christmas story of the breakup of the Episcopal Church in Northern Virginia. Nine parishes have voted to secede from the American church.
comments off Saturday 23 Dec 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
A rebirth for church
New York Daily News Paul. D. Colford November 25, 2006
Building leveled on 9/11 to rise again
Five years after tiny St. Nicholas Church was crushed in the collapse of the nearby twin towers, parishioners finally know where they’ll rebuild.
1 comment Monday 27 Nov 2006 | Jacobse | Orthodox Christianity, Religion in America |
Faith and Funding
Wall Street Opinion Journal Andrew Stark November 14, 2006
A left-wing evangelical view of faith-based government programs.
David Kuo created a stir just before the election by claiming, in his book “Tempting Faith,” that the Bush administration had betrayed evangelicals and other members of the Religious Right by failing to devote sufficient moral force or government funds to “compassionate conservatism,” not least to the faith-based initiatives that were part of Mr. Bush’s early domestic program.
comments off Tuesday 14 Nov 2006 | Jacobse | Politics, Religion in America |
Theo-Panic!
Townhall.com Rich Lowry October 18, 2006
In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell governed England with a cadre of major generals, establishing a kind of low-church Protestant theocracy. Catholic priests were chased from the country, and Anglican clergy were suppressed. Censorship and blue laws were tightened.
2 comments Thursday 19 Oct 2006 | Jacobse | Politics, Religion in America |
Dreher goes Orthodox
Beliefnet Rod Dreher October 12, 2006
Orthodoxy and me
I apologize for this very long post, but it’s time to clear something up: yes, I am now a communicant of the Orthodox Church, and have been (along with my family) for a couple of months.
26 comments Thursday 12 Oct 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
IRD: NCC Chief’s Request to Visit Guantanamo Bay Prisoners is a Political Ploy That Overlooks Real Persecution Overseas
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 /Christian Newswire/ — The National Council of Churches General Secretary should seek to visit imprisoned Christians and other innocent prisoners of conscience around the world instead of just U.S.- held Islamic radicals if he truly cares about the plight of the abused, said Institute on Religion and Democracy Religious Liberties Director Faith J.H. McDonnell on Wednesday.
comments off Tuesday 19 Sep 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
Challenging church teaching
Wichita Eagle Rebecca Losen Lum September 9, 2006
Catholic women have participated in ordination rituals asserting their belief that they are called to be priests.
At age 11, Kathleen Stack Kunster felt a strong pull to the priesthood. When the 61-year-old Emeryville, Calif., woman was finally ordained July 31 in a riverboat ceremony in Pennsylvania, she cried for an hour and a half.
comments off Sunday 10 Sep 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
God’s Protection
Wall Street Journal Christine Gardner August 18, 2006
With the recent approval by the FDA of the over-the-counter sale of Plan B, the “morning after” pill, there has been much discussion of where various groups of Americans come down on the issue of contraception. When we think about American attitudes toward a topic like this, we tend to assume that religious, “red state” Americans line up on one side of a divide, with secular “blue state” Americans on the other. Perhaps, but only up to a point. American evangelicals, as it happens, are pro-contraception. A Harris Poll conducted online in September 2005 shows that evangelicals overwhelmingly support birth control (88%).
comments off Friday 18 Aug 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
Spreading the Word–Fast
Wall Street Opinion Journal Andrea Tunarosa July 28, 2006
A new system makes church membership grow exponentially.
At one of his recent Sunday services at the Heavenly Vision Center in the Bronx, N.Y., the Rev. Salvador Sabino asked all the “leaders” in the room to rise. He was shocked to see an elderly woman named Sonia among those who stood up. She was one of the quietest people he had ever known–he had once even wondered whether she was mute. Mr. Sabino then asked: “Will all the heads of a cell rise?” The woman remained standing. He later found out that, despite her withdrawn personality, Sonia had at least 48 people under her guidance. Beneath that shy exterior was a true passion for leadership.
comments off Friday 28 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
Lubbock, Texas, plans to pray for rain
Ed. Let’s hope the ACLU does not try to stop them.
LUBBOCK, Texas, July 24 (UPI) — Public officials in Lubbock, Texas, are organizing a day to pray for rain.
comments off Tuesday 25 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
The Democrats’ Unreligious Fringe
Los Angeles Times Gregory Rodriguez July 16, 2006
Republicans kowtow to the religious right, but Democrats have their own pesky religious voting bloc: the secular left.
A FEW WEEKS AGO, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech to a group of liberal Christians in which he called on his fellow Democrats to tear down the party’s self-imposed wall between religious faith and politics.
2 comments Sunday 23 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | Politics, Religion in America |
Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins
Los Angeles Times Charlotte Allen July 9, 2006
Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.
The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn’t simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.
14 comments Monday 10 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
The American Biblical Tradition: The King James Version used to be our common text
Wall Street Opinion Journal Mark A Knoll Friday, July 7, 2006
In 1911 the English-speaking world paused to mark the 300th anniversary of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, with American political leaders foremost in the chorus of exaltation. To former president Theodore Roosevelt, this Bible translation was “the Magna Carta of the poor and the oppressed . . . the most democratic book in the world.” Soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson said much the same thing: “The Bible (with its individual value of the human soul) is undoubtedly the book that has made democracy and been the source of all progress.”
3 comments Friday 07 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | American history, Religion in America |
Black Activists Criticize Efforts to Politicize Black Churches
MEDIA ADVISORY, July 3, /Christian Newswire/ — Members of the black leadership network Project 21 are speaking out against the efforts by some left-leaning black religious leaders to politicize black houses of worship.
At the “National Conference and Revival for Social Justice in the Black Church” held in Dallas last week, Reverends Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Joseph Lowery exhorted the leaders of black churches to reorient themselves and their congregations to fight for social justice issues instead of addressing moral issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
comments off Monday 03 Jul 2006 | Jacobse | Politics, Religion in America |
Presbyterians and the Holy Trinity: Let Us Phrase
Los Angeles Times K. Connie Kang June 30 2006
Delegates to the U.S. church’s policy-making body endorse other wordings to describe a ‘triune God.’
When referring to the Trinity, most Christians are likely to say “Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”
comments off Friday 30 Jun 2006 | Jacobse | Religion in America |
