Religion Dispatches
…d organizations which see homosexual behavior as immoral. There is debate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded religious therapists. However, even if Spiegel had correctly identified the nature and participants in the debate, she still would not have gotten it quite right. To his credit, Schumacher-Matos does a better job when he reviews material given to him by Spiegel and her editor…
Read More…what that agenda was and how it could be implemented in concrete detail. But the jig is up. Its been nearly three years. The pope has clearly laid out his priorities, first in Laudato si and then during his recent trip to the U.S. But at their fall meeting in Baltimore this week, the majority of the bishops forcefully rejected giving Francis’ concerns regarding poverty, the environment and immigration equal time with their own regarding abortion…
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…n implicit acknowledgment is present across this diverse range of musical output that that which is holy is also whole. With the authority of the church largely removed from the lives of young people, institutional religion is no longer mediating theological conversations. This has given artists and audiences free rein to reach more deeply into their Christian heritages and memories to grapple with holy mysteries that were once closely managed by…
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…any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Diff…
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…as religious leaders, is the so-called “Rise of the Religious Nones.” The number of dropouts/defectors from church involvement has risen significantly over the last several years, such that about 23 percent of the American population now claims no religious affiliation. They leave for many reasons, ranging from a general disillusionment with large-scale institutions in general to the politicization of religion and religious scandals—whether finan…
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…Bonaparte. On an August evening in 1791, either before or during the revolution (depending on when you date the revolution’s beginning), slaves performed a voodoo rite, Robertson’s “pact with the devil.” That the dominant tradition existing alongside Voodoo is Catholicism implicitly buttresses Robertson’s case. As for the actual events, however: though slave revolts occurred often throughout the colonies in both Americas, the one that liberated H…
Read More…ndly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there really are… Rep. Peter King (R-NY), minus 45 years f…
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…successful, we realize that we cannot limit our work to higher education but must also reach out to public policy makers and faith leaders. Even now we are preparing to use what power and authority we have to make our demands known to our local, state and federal politicians. Our work will also include very serious discussions with faith leaders, for many police officers are parishioners in the very denominations whose candidates for ministry ent…
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…clean way of doing things and the second is somewhat messy and difficult. But the truth is that I’ve never seen the first kind of politics work. … It has been my experience and reading of history generally that politics is rarely a gentlemanly debate about the public good but is rather a struggle between competing interests. And ideology is usually what binds these interests together through common values and worldviews. In our system those intere…
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…onny and Cher’s transgender son, helped pave the way with a documentary about his experience that came out in 2011, the same year he was featured on Dancing With the Stars. I remember watching some of that season, pleasantly surprised that my conservative evangelical mom clearly sympathized with him as the show told parts of his story and Cher showed up to cheer him on. Not long after, Daytime Emmy-winning actor and producer Laverne Cox, who is a…
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