Tag Archives: Religion

Who are American Evangelicals?

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Today in America, Evangelicals are estimated to make up a quarter of the population, or, at least, according to other estimates, 50 million people.  The term ‘evangelical’ has a lot of connotations and stereotypes associated with it.  For example, some consider an Evangelical to be “anyone who likes Billy Graham.”  Like most stereotypes, some of the characterizations of Evangelicals are at least partly rooted in truth.  But who are American Evangelicals really?  In this essay, I will examine what it means to be an evangelical, the origins and history of evangelicalism, and modern evangelicalism before concluding.

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Converting to the American God: The Transformation of Immigrant Religion to American Religion in Film

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Before examining how a religion brought by immigrants can be ‘Americanized,’ we must first understand what a religion is.  Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has defined religion as a system of symbols that acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and presenting those conceptions with an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.  With this definition, religion as a cultural system can be seen as it is traditionally seen, as well as the less common civil religion, in which religion goes beyond spirituality and rituals into more general and secular society.

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Transforming the World: The Transformations of Malcolm X

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Perhaps the shortest and easiest way to summarize the life of Malcolm Little, ‘Detroit Red’, ‘Satan’, Malcolm X, and finally El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is to quote Ossie Davis, who explained to a magazine why he eulogized Malcolm X: “He had been a criminal, an addict, a pimp, and a prisoner; a racist, and a hater, he had really believed the white man was a devil. But all this had changed. Two days before his death, in commenting to Gordon Parks about his past life he said: ‘That was a mad scene. The sickness and madness of those days! I’m glad to be free of them.’” Or, as Columbia professor Manning Marable subtitled his biography of Malcolm X, it was A Life of Reinvention. In his own Autobiography, Malcolm noted that his “whole life had been a chronology of changes.”  His life molded the world, and his legacy still lives on today, both globally and locally.

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A clarification of my Dallas Morning News column “We should value religious uncertainty more”

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This past Saturday, my column, “Faith can polarize us – and certainty is not the answer,” was published in the Dallas Morning News.  Well, it turns out that writing about faith can be polarizing as well.

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What do you want for Christmas?

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When Christmas approaches, I often get caught up in my desire for material things, and I lose sight of what really matters. Continue reading →

Who’s screwing whom?

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Priorities, America.  When will we learn priorities?

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Let’s Be Real Here

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I’m an American student.  America’s Youth loves working hard, but let’s be real here- we only work hard the night before it’s due.  And I know that offends my generation, as we don’t like to admit our problems.  Society today, let’s be real here, isn’t exactly being “real” to itself.  I think it’s time to address hypocrisy one pretense at a time.

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Sexism in the Bible: Mark 7:24-30

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Mark 7:24-30 text.

Although unknown, the author of the Gospel of Mark was almost undoubtedly a male, just like the rest of Biblical authors are assumed to be.  By using the feminist method of Biblical criticism, we can closely examine how the author, both explicitly and implicitly, views women.  Living in an extremely patriarchal society, the author clearly displays the sexism that was so common in the era, and so common throughout the Bible itself.  This negative view of women is especially exposed in the passage of Mark 7:24-30, in which Jesus interacts with a Syrophoenician Gentile woman.

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