Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 25-08-2010
Randall Stephens
So here’s a find a got from an Emporia, Kansas, thrift shop back in 1995. I’ve held on to this record, called John 15:13, by the Christian Sons, for ages now. It’s perfect pitch early 1970s, evangelical awesomeness. (If I remember 
right, the Christian Sons were an Assemblies of God, soft rock group from Colorado that didn’t want to push it into full-throttle Jesus People freakiness.)
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Filed Under (Reigion Gossip) by Admin on 25-08-2010
President Obama a Muslim?
Eighteen percent of Americans think so, which is up from 12 percent of Americans who thought back in March 2008 that he was a Muslim.
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated televangelist Frederick Price’s defamation lawsuit claiming ABC’s “20/20″ news program used a fictionalized sermon portraying himself as a wealthy braggart out of context.
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Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 24-08-2010
Linford D. Fisher
It used to be a bad word. Franciscan. Well, for colonial historians, at least. I mean, really, with a full-out colonial missions program to American Indians that was inescapably ethnocentric at best (even if well intended) or disturbingly malevolent at worst, Franciscans have usually been at the religious center of the so-called Black Legend with their forced labor and corporeal punishment of Natives in Florida, New Mexico, and California. This is particularly true vis--vis the typical scholarly praise concerning the relatively tolerant, culturally sensitive missionizing undertaken by the Jesuits in the colonial period. The classic, recent touchstone on the depredations of the Franciscans in the New Mexico context is, of course, Ramon Gutierrezs When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away (1991). Despite the various criticisms that have subsequently emerged, this text is seemingly here to stay. It is a gripping narrative, to be sure. Who couldnt help but cringe at his lengthy recounting of the eighty years of Franciscan evangelization prior to the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 that included overt sexual exploitation and humiliation?
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A Time magazine poll released Thursday found that 43 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Muslims, far outpacing the numbers for Mormons (29 percent), Catholics (17 percent), Jews (13 percent) and Protestants (13 percent). Twenty-five percent of those polled said most Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans.
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Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 23-08-2010
Paul Harvey
Here’s a review of a new book about religious liberalism through the 20th century, by the author of a very fine biography of Walter Rauschenbusch (The Kingdom is Always But Coming). It should be of interest to some.
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Australian of the Year Prof Patrick McGorry is among a number of top psychiatrists who have been targeted by the Church of Scientology after they spoke out against the religion.
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Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 22-08-2010
Randall Stephens
I was just thinking about a new idea for the blog. Maybe a series of posts? “The Past is Never Dead . . .” It could entail news items or books that deal with contemporaries who are wrestling with history. To 
paraphrase Carl Becker “everyman/woman his/her own religious historian.” Many Americans come to grips with the nation’s religious identity be resorting to the past. (Isn’t this Glenn Beck’s big campaign?) Perhaps history has a greater resonance right now. Some questions: How do believers and non-believers use history to describe what America is or has been? Who owns American religious history? Why is it so important for citizens to put religious history, or just American history in general, to use for the present?
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Bond was set Friday at $250,007 for sect leader Geody Harman, who was arrested Wednesday on a Utah warrant on rape charges.
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Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 21-08-2010
right, the Christian Sons were an Assemblies of God, soft rock group from Colorado that didn’t want to push it into full-throttle Jesus People freakiness.)