Religion Dispatches
…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …
Read More…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…
Read More…ot next May. (UPDATE: The measure passed the Senate this afternoon.) North Carolina had, so far, been the only state in the Southeast to resist such a discriminatory amendment to their constitution, thanks to Democratic control of their legislature. Now that Republicans rule the roost, the measure has passed, even as the state’s unemployment rate is 10.1 percent. House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake opened the floor debate this way: “The questi…
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…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
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…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
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…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…
Read More…o Brazil, where cultural religious traditions such as Candomble are demonized, and Pentecostalism is lauded as the progressive religion not connected to a difficult history? I predict all of the above. The fears of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum that South Sudan is “ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous preachers” are well founded. The die has been cast, and the relationship that was started in order to stop genocide will be a relationship that will f…
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…who supports marriage equality and abortion rights be elected in the rural South? And then there are the new district maps that were released just last week. According to Aaron Blake at The Fix, Shuler now represents the most conservative district in the state. His district (which voted 52 percent for McCain/Palin in 2008) has, with a few redrawn lines on a map, been converted to one that voted 58 percent for the Republican ticket. Blake notes,…
Read More…technocrat and LDS corporate culture—isn’t working in the Palmetto state. South Carolina is no cakewalk for a wonky Yankee Mormon. This year, we did not witness some of the overt Lee Atwater-style underhanded electoral anti-Mormonism that we saw in 2008, when Romney opponents mailed Christmas cards bearing the Romney family picture alongside approving quotes about God and His plural wives from nineteenth-century Mormon leaders. Political reporter…
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…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…
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