Scientific Creationism and Evangelical Christianity: A Reply

1985 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-666
Author(s):  
Robert C. Williams
Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Ruben Sanchez-Sabate

This article approaches the grammars of meaning creation by Scientific Creationism and New Atheism from an anthropological-communicological perspective. By grammars of meaning creation, we understand the different languages that the human being uses to communicate the meaning of their existence to themself and others. Nowadays, Scientific Creationism is disseminated around the world and has transcended evangelical Christianity by permeating non-Christian religions. On the other hand, New Atheism, headed by Richard Dawkins, has also reached non-Western cultures such as Muslim cultures. Starting from Apelian transcendental semiotics, the hermeneutics of Durand’s symbol, and Lluís Duch’s anthropological study on mythos and logos, we reflect on the horizons of understanding of both movements. Our study shows that, contrary to what one might think given the antagonistic metaphysical positions the two movements seem to profess, Scientific Creationists and New Atheists share the same grammar of meaning creation: positivism. What one could interpret as a new epistemological controversy between science and religion can be better understood as a fight based on positivist science to establish the true origin myth. Thus, creationists and atheists implicitly recognize positivism as the contemporary theological discourse, i.e., the self-evident grammar of meaning creation that allows the Truth to be expressed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Dorina Miller Parmenter

Investigating the Christian Bible as “America’s Iconic Book” (following Marty 1982) reveals that this icon is generated and maintained not only through lofty theology and high church rituals, but also through mundane and often invisible biblical practices. By examining how people engage with their personal Bibles, scholars can better understand how status and authority is generated not only through semantic meaning, but also through material and embodied actions. This article looks at one example of this in contemporary American Evangelical Christianity: the display of worn-out Bibles and the discourses that surround the phenomena of duct-taped Bibles.


Author(s):  
Lydia Bean

It is now a common refrain among liberals that Christian Right pastors and television pundits have hijacked evangelical Christianity for partisan gain. This book challenges this notion, arguing that the hijacking metaphor paints a fundamentally distorted picture of how evangelical churches have become politicized. The book reveals how the powerful coalition between evangelicals and the Republican Party is not merely a creation of political elites who have framed conservative issues in religious language, but is anchored in the lives of local congregations. Drawing on research at evangelical churches near the U.S. border with Canada, this book compares how American and Canadian evangelicals talk about politics in congregational settings. While Canadian evangelicals share the same theology and conservative moral attitudes as their American counterparts, their politics are quite different. On the U.S. side of the border, political conservatism is woven into the very fabric of everyday religious practice. The book shows how subtle partisan cues emerge in small group interactions as members define how “we Christians” should relate to others in the broader civic arena, while liberals are cast in the role of adversaries. It explains how the most explicit partisan cues come not from clergy but rather from lay opinion leaders who help their less politically engaged peers to link evangelical identity to conservative politics. This book demonstrates how deep the ties remain between political conservatism and evangelical Christianity in America.


Author(s):  
Nicolette D. Manglos-Weber

This chapter presents the historical and conceptual background to the book’s argument. It starts with a history of Ghana, followed by an analysis of the trends that have led to high levels of out-migration, and then to a description of Ghanaian populations in Chicago. Next, it addresses the concept of social trust in general and personal trust in particular, developing a theory of personal trust as an imaginative and symbolic activity, and analyzing interracial relations through the lens of racialized distrust. It concludes by describing the role of religion in the integration of immigrant groups into the United States and the particular religious frameworks that characterize Charismatic Evangelical Christianity in Ghana.


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