Religion Dispatches
…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…
Read More…ort and through security, I was too tired for breakfast. I slept the whole flight from RDU to Charlotte, but once I’d landed in Charlotte, with only twenty minutes to transfer to my Milwaukee flight, I was starving. Famished. Broken. But the only breakfast option I trusted was Starbucks, and every single Starbucks had a line that resembled a breakdown of civilization at the baggage claim. So I did not do that. I stopped at a newsstand slash conve…
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…troy the European Union with Islam, Sharia law and homosexuality,” reports Newsweek. “The group considers itself the new version of a movement with the same name in the 1930s that tried to drive out Jews from Poland years before the Holocaust started.” Among the banners and chants were “White Europe,” “Clean Blood,” “Europe Will Be White,” “Pray or Islamic Holocaust,” and “We Want God.” “Supporters of the country’s governing conservative Law and J…
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…secuted bloggers for “hurting people’s religious sentiments.” Bob Shine at New Ways Ministry notes that two Catholic officials in Bangladesh condemned the killings: Fr. Albert Thomas Rozario, head of the Archdiocese of Dhaka’s Justice and Peace Commission and a Supreme Court lawyer, told UCA News that justice must be ensured for the two gay men murdered: ‘The church always supports the demands of LGBT people for equal rights and opportunities as o…
Read More…at a group of students in the playground of St. Mary’s Parochial School in Newburgh, New York, causing minor injuries to several of the students. The majority of attacks during this time period were by students on other students or teachers, and usually involved stabbing with knives, or hitting with stones. 1900–1930s There are very few reports of mass or multiple school shootings during the first three decades of the 20th Century, with the three…
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…y, we’re doing this to save money. You get mindfulness but you don’t get a new gym.” They’re saying, “you don’t get a new gym, period.” And then the people who care, the “good” people, see that the school isn’t getting a new gym. Then what? They have to help them some other way. I think your concern is a good concern, but it hasn’t happened in the real world. Deprivation is happening independent of what the mindfulness people are doing. Our intent…
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…elevant, which is why the Westboro Church case will be decided strictly on free speech grounds and not as a free exercise case. Smith was immediately unpopular and congressional efforts to overturn it by statute met with limited success, leaving federal government actions that substantially burden religious practice subject to the compelling state interest test, but state and local laws exempt. The funeral privacy interest in Snyder is a generall…
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…nce of an immaterial soul? Science has discovered nothing that contradicts free will. To deny free will’s existence is to deny that our conscious, psychological deliberations—Should I ask my girlfriend to marry me? Should I major in engineering or art?—influence our actions. Such a conclusion flies in the face of common sense. Of course, sometimes we deliberate insincerely, toward a foregone conclusion, or we fail to act upon our resolution. But n…
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…tion movement. It also bears saying that none of what Wagner has touted as new, is new; rather, it is the recapitulation of old Pentecostal teachings—and actually heresy to some Pentecostals (like the Latter Rain and Shepherding movements). The NAR was “created” by Wagner after leaving Fuller. Wagner believes that the offices of apostles and prophets are still given by God for today, and they are not just for the church, but for the world. Some ap…
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…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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