Religion Dispatches
…t to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I didn’t get one, but my citizen journalist dues are current. Stay tuned….
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…rent identities? No doubt this is a distinct circumstance based on a very particular identity, but cultural progressives are often on the vanguard of fighting for special accommodations for specific groups. Women-only, black-only and LGBT-only spaces are a relevant parallel. Such spaces take into account the issues related to certain social identities (the personal) and advocate for a reshaping of the public square to accommodate it (the political…
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…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…
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…inion by acknowledging what historians have amply demonstrated: that well-intentioned, pious Christians—and not just atheists—committed heinous acts. Christian teachings are no guarantee against atrocity and, in the context of the Third Reich, actually came to justify the Holocaust….
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…this way “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” Black theology challenges white Christians to love our black brothers and sisters not in a cloying or condescending way, but with real justice. In a nation marked by centuries of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, legal segregation, and systemic racism, tha…
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…also become increasingly depersonalized. In the age of the internet and smart phones, we can shop anywhere at anytime and have no contact with another human being. We can shop alone, in secret. I remember growing up going to my local drugstore with my mother. It had a lunch counter, the owner’s son was my soccer coach, purchases were written up on slips of paper and individuals paid at the end of each month. This was not small town America in the…
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…or studio efforts haven’t cracked the code for commercial success either: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earned a respectable $100 million, but cost an estimated $125 million to make. Son of God did okay at the box office, grossing $26.5 million its opening weekend, bolstered by support from American megachurch pastors including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. But ticket sales quickly faded. Independent studios have done better. Sherwood Pictures, the movie…
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…not one of us did or said anything to fight back against the ugliness and barbarity of indiscriminate violence. Too many people—not just dentists on Virgin Airlines—make statements like, “Muslims don’t do enough to reject terrorism.” It’s probable many of them have never met Muslims. If they tried, they might be surprised. In fact, the reaction to my essay—you’ll read an excerpt below—has surprised me, too. I wish I could find my airline compani…
Read More…words, the birth control coverage, “and that entitlement is to women” who are “harmed” if they are denied it. Justice Anthony Kennedy, thought to be the swing vote, asked Clement, “how would you suggest we think about the rights of employees?”, noting that their religious beliefs might not square with those of their employer. But Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether RFRA was even intended to take into account the interests of third parties a…
Read More…, a magical creature of immense strength and power, to defend them. He prepared a large figure from clay, and with the help of others, combined the four elements, air, earth, wind and water, into this creation. Finally, Rabbi Yehuda wrote the secret name of God on a piece of paper and placed it in the Golem’s mouth, at which point it came alive. Now it was a sin to create life in this manner, for only God was empowered to create life outside of re…
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