Over at Theos, a British think tank working in the area of religion, politics and society, recently released a new report asking: “Is there a ‘Religious Right’ emerging in Britain?“
Posts Tagged ‘Christian Right’
January 25th, 2013
Does fragmentation equal change?
posted by James S. Bielo
Marcia Pally’s post tracks the important fact that contemporary American evangelical social and political engagement is fragmenting. She rightly observes that such fragmenting is not historically novel, and is a self-consciously critical response to the power of the Religious Right.
To read of “robust polyphony” among evangelicals was especially welcome to me, as I addressed this phenomenon in a recent ethnography, Emerging Evangelicals (NYU Press, 2011). As a cultural anthropologist, I explored the identities fashioned, practices performed, histories claimed, institutions created, and critiques waged among evangelicals influenced by the Emerging Church movement. Pally’s astute analysis returned me to a question I stopped short of fully developing: does fragmentation equal change?
January 17th, 2013
Southern Baptists’ hands-on approach to changing the world
posted by Bob SmietanaOn the evening of Good Friday 2013, several thousand young evangelicals will file into The Church at Brook Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in that Red State. They will open up their Bibles and then for the next six hours listen as a slender, boyish-looking pastor walks them through long passages of Scripture verse by verse and tells them to forsake material goods and self-indulgence and devote their lives to serving Jesus. All around the country other gatherings of young people will tune in by simulcast. David Platt, author of Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, is not a typical celebrity pastor. He does no book tours, doesn’t drive a Bentley, seems to have no opinions about politics, and hardly ever has time for even a brief interview with reporters. And he’s not the stereotypical Southern Baptist power broker.
January 16th, 2013
Rethinking that word “evangelical”
posted by David P. GusheeProfessor Marcia Pally aptly describes the evangelical polyphony of our time. Despite the dreadful habit of newspapers of using the term “evangelical” to mean “white social conservative bloc of the GOP,” contemporary evangelical political views are much more diverse than that.
As Pally notes here and in her book, The New Evangelicals, it is not accurate to say that the diversity of evangelical politics and public engagement is some kind of new trend. What is actually the historical aberration is the way a distinguished global movement within Protestant Christianity that has always had diverse politics got swept into the Republican Southern Strategy of the Nixon years and beyond. It is a terrible historical accident that the movement that gave us the abolitionist William Wilberforce and the firebrands of the early Social Gospel movement became identified, after 1972, with reactionary white right-wing politics in the American South.
July 11th, 2012
Exodus International renounces gay “cure”
posted by Candice ScharfRecently, the President of Exodus International, Alan Chambers, made statements renouncing some of his organization’s beliefs, such as the ability to “cure” homosexuality by Christian prayer and psychotherapy.
March 9th, 2011
Brigitte Gabriel, Peter King, and the scrutiny of American Muslims
posted by Joseph BlankholmNew York Times national religion correspondent Laurie Goodstein has written a bio/exposé piece on Brigitte Gabriel: “Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.”
June 29th, 2010
Religious views on immigration don’t mirror party politics
posted by Grace YukichIn a recent article for Mother Jones, Suzy Khimm asks whether a right-wing schism may be developing over immigration reform. In recent months, many evangelical leaders- including conservative Christians like Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention- have voiced support for immigration reform that would include a pathway to legalization for many undocumented immigrants. While Land’s group has supported a comprehensive approach to reform for several years, he has become more adament in his support since the passage of Arizona’s contentious immigration law. These increased efforts by conservative Christians on behalf of immigrants have created conflict between their groups and right-wing groups opposed to immigration reform, making former allies into possible political enemies.
June 29th, 2010
The “inter-religious” university and the Christian right
posted by Jake AlterIn early June, the Claremont School of Theology announced that it would merge with its local Jewish and Muslim counterparts to form an inter-religious university this coming fall. Philip Clayton discusses the controversy this has aroused in conservative Christian communities.
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