Religion Dispatches
…power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at play in Francis’ homily. The Pope, after all, listed yoga alongside catechism classes and so did not set it apart as a practice that Catholics should avoid altogether, as…
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…claration that it respects the “foundational constitutional protection for free speech and association.” Indeed, the history of surveillance in the United States beginning with the establishment of the FBI in 1908 is the chronicle of infringing upon civil liberties and freedom of speech in order to target individuals and communities deemed to be politically subversive, including (perceived) communists, civil rights leaders, and communities of colo…
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…ms of users. Information supposedly wants to be free; but instead of being free to the users, it’s information about the users that’s given freely unto corporate and political rulers. Is it any wonder that Hollywood is far more likely to envision advanced VR in dystopian rather than utopian terms? But our commitment to the cause reflects the very human experience of trying to enchant the world and make it meaningful. Virtual worlds offer that oppo…
Read More…this called this “theocratic libertarianism”: it creates an economic zone free of government regulation, but it does not create a zone free of the regulations of religion. This is the model in which care for the poor is the responsibility of the family and the church and any government safety net is labelled “socialism.” It is the model in which education is the sole responsibility of families, leading to the goal of eliminating public education…
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…Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical, titled Charity in Truth, which criticized free market fundamentalism.” That encyclical included clear and direct criticism of the free-market fundamentalism at the heart of attempts to dismantle financial reform: The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long t…
Read More…ntraception coverage litigation, in which a court has held that either the Free Exercise Clause or RFRA entitled a for-profit commercial enterprise to an exemption from a generally applicable law by virtue of a burden on the religious exercise of the employer or its owners, managers, or directors. And whenever such a case has reached the Supreme Court – including Braunfeld v. Brown (1961), Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc. (1968), and Unite…
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…the constitution, which currently states that marriage is a consensual act between spouses. Indonesia: Islamist group and police work together in raid on gay party Human Rights Watch reported that a militant Islamist group “with a well-earned reputation for harassment and violence against minorities led police to raid a gathering of men for a so-called sex party.” The group, the Islamic Defenders Front (or FPI), claimed its investigative unit tipp…
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…tion. As Rev. Osagyefo Sekou has noted here on RD, this has led to discord between activists and black churches with the former accusing the latter of Civil Rights era “respectability politics.” As Black Lives Matter has gained a foothold in the American consciousness, the sentiment among some in the city has become, if your pastors aren’t directly speaking to the challenges we face in the headlines and in the household, perhaps it might be time t…
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…oard of overstepping the First Amendment and infringing on their rights to free religious exercise and free speech.” Among the colleges and seminaries that spurn regional accreditation, many justify their decision by citing freedom from governmental oversight, a position compatible with the conservative mentality often dominant at such institutions. Ideologically consistent, this claim has the ancillary benefit of helping its makers dodge the cost…
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…who believes he knows Muslims better than they themselves do. Whether because of race, or because it’s transcended race; whether because of religion, or because it has transcended religion; in all these scenarios, the West always knows best. Indeed, the West may know best because the West can change. Islam, on the other hand, is frozen, stuck in what Dipesh Chakrabarty called the “waiting room of history.” This is not, by the way, an exclusivel…
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