Religion Dispatches
…the two prayers aren’t “similar:” one is Christian, and one is Muslim. The Kansas City Star reports Abdullah is a “devout Muslim” who promised himself that if he scored a touchdown, “I’m going to prostrate before God in the end zone.” Last night, he was penalized for apparently violating Rule 12, Section 3, Article 1 (d) of the NFL rulebook (“players are prohibited from engaging in any celebrations or demonstrations while on the ground.”) The leag…
Read More…made by 13 parishioners, a nun who coordinated victims’ assistance for the Kansas City diocese, and a priest, the Rev. James Connell. It was backed by an online petition signed by 113,000 Catholics. They asked Pope Francis to remove Bishop Robert Finn, who was convicted in 2012 of a misdemeanor charge of failing to report a priest who had pornographic images of children on his computer. The priest is currently serving 50 years for taking the pictu…
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…ld Wal-Mart pharmacy employee from Houston, told me he spent a week at the Kansas City IHOP, where young people pray around the clock, which he called “powerful and life-changing.” (Antoine, who is African American, would not tell me who he was voting for but said he could not vote for a candidate who favored abortion rights.) IHOP “stirs young people,” Antoine told me, and “keeps them continuously alert about the end-times. So they can’t be distr…
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…l-Mart pharmacy employee from Houston, who “told me he spent a week at the Kansas City IHOP, where young people pray around the clock, which he called ‘powerful and life-changing.’” IHOP, he told me, “stirs young people” and “keeps them continuously alert about the end-times. So they can’t be distracted because they’re continuously being bombarded by the preaching of the end-times so it’s continuously on their heart and their minds.” This is how I…
Read More…ty about the difficulty of identifying signs of radicalization, it seems a Kansas City cop would be able to do so in the course of a writing a ticket. According to the Brennan Center study, 40% of the terror plots that have been thwarted by law enforcement have been discovered, at least in part, thanks to tips from Muslims. Yet surveillance, infiltration, and even what community members consider entrapment has left them feeling targeted as crimina…
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…Turkey: Pride, under threat from Islamists and nationalists, cancelled by city officials City officials in Istanbul announced that the city would not allow the annual pride parade to be held this year. It was scheduled for June 26. A far-right youth group affiliated with the nationalist Great Union Party had held a press conference promised to do “what is needed” to stop the event from taking place. More from the Independent: Ömer Akpinar, a Turk…
Read More…others more important than our own superfluous abundance. So what of that City [up]on a Hill? Is it like stage from which everyone can see us? A place of honor? A Pedestal? Frankly the Puritans would have considered that idolatrous hubris. Winthrop meant that, as representatives of the Christian faith, the rest of the world would judge Christianity (and even God) by whether or not they lived up to this commitment. For we must consider that we sha…
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…omething-year-old Deadhead guys hit on my teenage friends by offering them tickets to shows. Deadheads were anathema to my chosen subculture of socially conscious punks. East Bay punks were aggro and in your face about social justice, feminism, human rights; Deadheads, in our eyes, were too stoned and obsessed with their god Jerry to care. Sometimes, I’d be out in Berkeley at night, coming out of a punk show in some basement or garage, and I’d hea…
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…concrete slabs and illegally tapped into an adjacent power line for electricity. They dug into the ground and connected to the city’s water supply to have drinking water and dug a pit for a latrine. With television and a refrigerator, they managed to create a viable living space. The residents of Erbil were remarkably tolerant—sympathetic, really—to the situation of such impromptu refugee camps, and the refugees in vacant lots received hand-outs a…
Read More…federal identification document. The couple and their supporters said the city’s position was simply the latest example of the city’s unwillingness to perform a same-sex ceremony, and making demands that are not required of heterosexual couples. Kyrgyzstan: United Nations Human Rights Officials Urge Against Anti-Gay Bill The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged the government of Kyrgyzstan not to adopt the ant…
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