Religion Dispatches
…beca Grand; when my Christian neighbor told me she was getting threatening phone calls because of her Arab last name; when a Hindu Indian friend told me her kids were getting beaten up on the school bus. The irony of my T-shirt hit me then. I threw it away. I never felt like Muslim values—tolerance, compassion, generosity, honesty—were at odds with American ones. My elders often told us that the United States was the only true Muslim country, the…
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…the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it is far from free. Inherent in Christianity—in the system of thought, not just its history—are empire and violence, Krieger argues, particularly a mode of subjugation and submission to servitude—and its lacerations—that renames abuse as saintliness. Of this she is dubious, t…
Read More…ow. (Specific percentages for these demographics were not in the publicly available Levada Center write-up, so we’ll have to make do with these generalities.) I’m not sure what might motivate American “liberals” to dismiss what’s happening in Russia. For my own part, I’m more likely to encounter this sort of false equivalence from socially liberal Russians. I reside in Moscow these days, and most of the Russians I know to any degree of depth have…
Read More…aturday I will attend a family program. This I consider to be my duty.” Slovakia, as a rather conservative and predominately Roman Catholic country, currently does not recognize same-sex partnerships, and defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman. The proposal would strengthen the already conservative status quo and make it hard for any progressive legislation in the future. Slovak people were asked whether they agree with…
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…ad articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), which requires that a law be invalidated if it does not have a secular purpose, has the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, or fosters excessive entanglement between government and religious institutions. Rejecting arguments by both the Obama and Trump administrations (the litigation spanned the presidential transition, and the incoming administration maintained the position of its predec…
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…hism classes, marriage preparation, and visits to the sick. Bishop Ruiz elevated an extraordinary number of Maya men to the permanent diaconate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993….
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…ed invaluably to the building of the nation’s infrastructure, to the conservation and preservation of its natural resources, to its national culture and to the soul of its people. So how is it that the 1930s approach to poverty and unemployment was such a far cry from the cruel indifference we see today? There are a number of reasons, among them the fact that when Roosevelt took office, conditions were far more desperate for a far larger segment o…
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…most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging th…
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…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…
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…of the “Freedom Bus,” which is part of a campaign that CitizenGO, a conservative Spanish organization, has launched with the support of evangelical and Catholic organizations, clashed near the presidential palace. Neo-Nazi groups are among those who reportedly took part in the protests. A number of people were injured during the clashes. Activists also claimed they were attacked by religious groups on the street who accused them of pedophilia and…
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