Religion Dispatches
…y claim. I was ready to be proud once again, but about 30 seconds into the new ad, I was appalled and disappointed. The ad, set to some rockin’ acoustic guitar music, is bouncing along wonderfully, highlighting the diversity of the UCC. Then, a man and a woman share a prolonged kiss. The next scene is a pastor pronouncing two women married – the women turn to one another and … cut to the next scene. Wait! What? I get to see two hot young heterosex…
Read More
…ware and civically engaged? Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote a piece in The New Yorker, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” comparing the effectiveness of social media activism with the protests and activism of the civil rights movement. The conclusion Gladwell draws from his analysis, as is evident in the title, is to dismiss the effectiveness of new social media by arguing that it operates off of weak ties, rather than the str…
Read More…ch itself, in a contemporary version of Know-Nothing politics we can ill afford in the context of our current crises. A stimulus package ought not be reduced to preventing our best and brightest faculty from stimulating the powers of critical reasoning and the potential for new insights these powers create. The Cold War is over and, to use an ironic phrase Sherman used in the summer of 1864, “fairly won.” So the new MacCarthyism turns to a perenni…
Read More
…sections of religion and popular culture, I also looked forward to Perry’s new film because I wanted to see how his theological message of hope and faith would sustain his new efforts to address a global concern: the financial crisis. But the centralizing of the white family—which is a departure from Perry’s traditional filmic presentation—not only distanced Perry from his usual target audience of African Americans, it placed large servings of par…
Read More…ng homophobia. The pope’s visit came shortly after the parliament passed a new law that gives the government vast new powers to shut down community organizations for a variety of reasons. One clause would require charities to “not engage in any activity which is … contrary to the dignity of the people of Uganda”, which proponents fear could be used to clamp down on groups working to help LGBT people in Uganda. It would also allow groups to be disb…
Read More…tion for the journey. According to legend, Phoenician explorers called the new land they discovered “Barr Ilu,” “The Continent of God.” The pilgrims coming from England via Leiden, were indeed that—religious pilgrims who longed for a new world in which they could imagine a society without religious persecution. The discovery of water on Mars is a moment in which we can imagine afresh the origins of life. On the one hand, exploration is one of the…
Read More
…d the banning of children of color from a Philadelphia pool.) But the landscape of race relations has taken on many new contours since Hair first hit Broadway in the 1960s. The human rights struggle at the heart of this new production? Marriage equality. Gavin Creel, who plays Claude in the current production, is openly gay and serves as a co-chair of Broadway Impact, a group fighting for marriage equality. In a recent interview, Creel says that m…
Read More…rriages between a man and a woman have long been recognised in law in both New Zealand and in those Pacific Island nations. In New Zealand’s case, of course, an amendment to marriage law came into effect in August 2013 – which allows same-sex couples to legally marry. The Way Forward Working Group (WFWG) report makes a precept-upon-precept case for how such civil marriages could be blessed by the church. The Anglican Church in this province is gov…
Read More…LGBT book ban seen as part of struggle over Church’s social influence The New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo reported this week on moves by the new conservative mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, to ban 49 children’s books from preschool libraries. There is the story of the male dog who aspired to be a ballerina. The one about the little boy who wanted to be a princess, and a princess who wanted to be a soccer player. The tale of the penguin egg h…
Read More…eligious right wing, there have been low grumblings of protest against the new law, but for a nation where a woman’s hemline or her seat on a public bus can set off a firestorm, the response has been surprisingly muted. Dr. Eli Schussheim, chairman of the pro-life group Efrat, likened the decision to theft, saying that by allocating funding for non-medically necessary abortions, the committee “is stealing… from sick people… and giving the money in…
Read More