Religion Dispatches
…alled for an increase of a hundred thousand troops, which would double the number presently there. Yet it will still be half of the numbers of Russian troops that the former Soviet Union had deployed in Afghanistan—and it lost the war, dragging much of the Soviet economy down with it. A similarly dismal prognosis is in store for America’s continuing presence in Afghanistan. Moreover, the persistence of US troops in the region will continue to prov…
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…of Texas, Austin) and Meredith Worthen (University of Oklahoma) suggests a number of cautions that might well be applied to studies like that offered by King and colleagues. In their review, Musick and Worthen found no direct causal relationship between religion and health, with service attendance alone showing a meaningful correlation that extends to measured benefits in mortality. Going to church seems to be a good thing healthwise, but it’s not…
Read More…. Tunisia: LGBT advocacy group gains official recognition, experiences backlash and support Shams became the first LGBT rights group to win official recognition by the interior ministry. The group had applied in December 2014 and again in March 2015 and announced their status at a May 17 convening of LGBT groups, but it has meet a ferocious public backlash. From Oximity: Originally hailed as a monumental victory for sexual and gender minorities in…
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…one of the series’ creators and released last week, on April 15. Like the classic books loved by children of the 1980s and ’90s, the story starts with a disclaimer: “BEWARE and WARNING,” it says. “You and YOU ALONE are in charge of what happens in this story.” And like those classics, the story is built on a key idea of the American mode of spirituality known as “spiritual but not religious.” The Choose Your Own Adventure series that Edward Packar…
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…e late 1990s. The fact is, a significant number of Serbs, and even a large number of others from traditionally Orthodox backgrounds, continue to harbor a great deal of anger about Western intervention in the Kosovo War, which they see as a failure by the West to comprehend the historical role-reversal that’s taken place, including the persecution of Orthodox Christians by Albanians and other majority-Muslim ethnic groups during the Ottoman period….
Read More…er reason, that amendment was not palatable to the groups backing SB-1433. Last night, Personhood USA posted a statement calling it “unforgivable” that Steele had not called for a floor vote on SB-1433 that day—the first day that it would have been up for a floor vote anyway, and for a bill that was already controversial. Meanwhile, representatives from Oklahomans for Life began circulating a discharge petition: a bit of maneuvering which, if sign…
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…eland Security to build a wall along the Mexican border and increasing the number of border officers, the president signed an executive order that, according to the New York Times “suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.” The re…
Read More…g that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian Post scratching their heads, with headlines like this that riva…
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…(at a rate of .3 percent) was the American Baptist Churches USA, which is classified as a mainline denomination. Growth for evangelical institutions has occurred almost entirely under the auspices of the ambiguous classification of “evangelical non-denominational”. These trends in Protestantism coupled with the significant decline among those who identify as Catholic (from 23.9 percent to 20.8 percent between 2007 to 2014) indicate a deep ambivale…
Read More…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…
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