Religion Dispatches
…mages of children under fourteen. What is the worldview implicit in such a list of crimes, and listed in this order? Is it the Church’s earnest attempt to meet the world on its own terms? Or is an attempt by a Pope who is suspicious of any such accommodation to the world’s standards to turn the current public outcry to his own anti-modern purposes by strengthening the punitive internal administrative structure of the Church, all in the name of som…
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…frica, who were among 13 human rights activists detained and charged with “promoting homosexuality,” were deported: Local police chief Lazaro Mambosasa said they had been “promoting homosexuality”. “Tanzanian law forbids this act between people of the same sex, it is a violation of our country’s laws,” said Mambosasa. Just days later an NGO, the Community Health Education Services and Advocacy (CHESA) centre, was suspended on the same charge and a…
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…e of social and community values in pictures.” For the next 38 years, that code shaped Hollywood’s output. The Production Code insisted that movies were primarily “to be regarded as entertainment” that would “improve the race.” As such, movies should avoid explicit images that would be upsetting or play to “the lower and base element.” Those images included graphic violence, “excessive passion,” “white-slavery,” “scenes of actual child birth,” and…
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…convincing was this product launch, complete with Facebook ad campaign and promotional website including a promo video that went viral, that a number of customers were disappointed and angry to find out that it was a fake. Part of the confusion seems to have been that the launch occurred on March 28, not the customary April 1. But just as important was consumer demand. Enough people were convinced by the slick product rollout that they actually wa…
Read More…ay, in addition to struggling with an addiction to pornography. This short promo video offers an overview of their stories. By promoting these voices as representative of the entire experience within the LGBT community, even though they do not currently identify as such, the Adventist church elevates stories that portray all LGBT people as damaged, sex addicts, drug and alcohol abusers, unfaithful in relationships, and utterly lost if they do not…
Read More…mer athletes of color who had a positive experience with BYU and the Honor Code: “If Darron Smith wasn’t so hell bent on exposing BYU, the Church and the honor code office as racists, he’d find out that for every Thomas Stancil, Tico Pringle and Ray Hudson, there’s a Brandon Davies, Reno Mahe and Brian McDonald, the latter of which recovered from an alcohol-related probation, joined the Church and served a mission to Washington, DC.” Sikahema’s fu…
Read More…, and in what manner to express or not express these rights. It’s when the code that translates these rights for us somehow ceases to function properly in the background that problems result. I want to suggest that often when problems crop up around religious or religiously-motivated speech in the United States, they often have less to do with rights per se than with the unwritten code that determines how these rights are to be taken. At least tha…
Read More…ing that Obama should be impeached because he is a Muslim (complete with a promo promising free guns, paid for by “a millionaire” who wants you “protected against what’s coming.”) The video in the email is by evangelist Jack van Impe, known for his premillennial rapture theology and his disconnected rambling in Bible verses. It is entitled “President Obama’s Religion in Question” and argues that he is really a Muslim. Joan, who claims in an email…
Read More…ly Research Council as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The list is curious, though, because while it may be a list of perceived indignities and injustices visited upon some people who subscribe to a far right idea of Christianity, the list as a whole doesn’t even scratch the surface of actions last year that may have offended Jesus — or any person of faith or good will, for that matter. So, I submit my own list of the top five “Ant…
Read More…n has endorsed a candidate in a presidential primary. The Susan B. Anthony List, which has made defunding Planned Parenthood one of its signature goals, might be surprised to find out that Santorum supports funding Planned Parenthood. As I discussed earlier this week, Santorum told an interviewer in 2006 that he had voted for Title X (even though he thinks contraception is harmful to women and doesn’t even work). Title X is the federal program tha…
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