Religion Dispatches
…l visa victory The government’s immigration department has decided to appeal a September court ruling in favor of a woman who had been denied a dependent visa because her spouse is a woman. The announcement sparked complaints from LGBT human rights advocates. …
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…the first to do worse than its parents’ misses. What we are supposed to do better is politics, not markets). The real question of the day, for Whitman, was what edifice should be built upon such a massive constitutional and economic platform; how that question would be answered marked the real test for the future of the American experiment in democratic pluralism. Here is Whitman again: The Third stage, rising out of the previous ones, to make…
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…octrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfl…
Read More…tive sexual practices.” Christian also introduced a provision, which the House voted to table, that would have required state universities to use 10 percent of their appropriations on “Western Civilization” courses. The TCC was behind a bill that stalled last term that would have created a “School of Ethics, Western Civilization, and American Traditions” at the University of Texas at Austin. One of nine task forces maintained by the TCCRI is one o…
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…1990, noted: “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.” The CHA seems reluctant to wait for a court decision and instead want to push for a political one by convincing the president to expand the exemption now. It is in good position to press its case politically, as it has, as good lobbyists do, combined advocacy for its…
Read More…des. It ensures that the US makes public proclamations about democracy and freedom, while in reality, democracy is subsumed and sacrificed every day to self-interest, be that oil or domestic support for Israel. Realpolitik ideologues fear the unleashing of Arab democracy, because in the battle for resources, for alliances and for fraternity, they have largely sided against Muslims. Muslims, and Arabs in particular, have been conditioned by decad…
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…ous crosshairs as literal instructions to shoot, she certainly won’t be accused of promoting Christian neighborliness and peaceableness with such symbolism. What we can conclude was that Palin’s map, like her politics, was neither a call to constructive action of any kind nor a proposal for any meaningful vision of freedom. Palin’s, or Angle’s, or Beck’s defense is that they say lots of hyperbolic things for dramatic effect and people should know…
Read More…data: 50 percent of white evangelicals say they believe capitalism and the free market are at odds with Christian values. According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans. On first glance that seems difficult to accept given white evangelicals’ overwhelming electoral support for the Repu…
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…t an extensive spiritual and material network surrounding them. The Cercle promoted something they called “the Idea.” What was that? Neither the Cercle Harmonique nor the spirits they communicated with formally defined “the Idea,” but references to the Idea permeate their séance records. The Idea was a reformulation of the French revolutionary cry for liberté, égalité, fraternité. The Idea meant egalitarianism, equality and brotherhood. It was the…
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…” was the only other huge applause line of the entire address. If the applause-o-meter in the House chamber were any judge, the heart of the matter is that, in the best Niebuhrian “realist” fashion, a “contentious and frustrating and messy democracy” is proving its superiority to every other nation with its domestic “civility,” while at the same time sending its military forces to fend off a shadowy and (let’s be honest now) apparently rather inef…
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