BLOG
Religious Literacy
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Cultures rise and fall, governments come and go, but religion remains a constant influence. Under all the verbiage of such things as laws and governments lie spiritual motivations and goals.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
I grew up in the south, where hair is big and religion is bigger: mega-church big. Mormons were different. Not the wearing-black-and-avoiding-ornament humility of the Mennonite faith, but quiet in their own way: no swearing, no drinking, and church boundaries divided by geographic location, not by the popularity of a specific preacher (they have a lay ministry anyway).
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
“How can genetic testing tell you your religion, anyway?” you might ask. 23andMe can’t tell that I’m a Scientologist. But it turns out that the Ashkenazi Jewish people stuck together so closely for so many years that genetic testers CAN tell if you’re one of them.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
I don’t think that there could have been a more appropriate song for us to sing that morning, for truly, it was amazing grace that brought us all together in the name of perhaps the most spiritual cause ever—help.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The venerable phrase “In God We Trust” has survived yet another legal attack and will continue to appear on the bills and coins in your pocket. A recent decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, confirmed similar decisions
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
On the first day of a four-part Open House on Religions of the World, I fulfilled my duty as a Jew. Are you surprised? Well, apparently, having an ancestor on my mother’s side named Pinkus gave me that right and obligation.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
I surprised myself the other day when I recognized that I was actually prejudiced against another religion. That was a real eye-opener as I have been on the receiving end of religious hate on several occasions, and that is never fun. Some backstory will help.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
As a child growing up in the Sixties, I heard plenty of chants that “God is dead.” I watched as people around me, wanting to change the world and their place in it, turned to drugs as a solution.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
A recently released report by the Pew Research Center showed that Americans are much more likely to be actively religious than their counterparts in other western nations and that the United States is unusual compared to other affluent countries in that many more Americans are actively religious.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Philosophy is one of those topics that seems to belong in some ivy-covered building being discussed by men in vests who punctuate pronouncements by pointing with a pipe stem and woman in fine dresses holding tea cups with their pinky fingers aloft.
