Religion Dispatches
…. What I’d like to quote now, however, is the next line: “Open the doors, off with the shoulder-straps, join us in a taste of freedom.” Translation via http://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/ — (Project team: Agnes Parker: translation/Eja Werner: coordination)…
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…no “forbidden work” can be performed in preparation of food. (There are non-Kosher restaurants in Israel, but no non-Kosher food in the Knesset building unless someone sneaks it in!) The Knesset has three cafeterias: one serving only “milk” foods and two serving “meat” foods. In late June, one of the two meat cafeterias was shut down when a diner reported finding a cockroach on a plate of rice. The closure was not done by the Israel health authori…
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…han ambassadors. In any case, he was not a heavy hitter politically or theo-politically—perhaps just a good party host. I suspect he was like any number of career Vatican diplomats whose suave ways get them these cushy assignments but whose accountability to the larger church is nil. Hey, afternoons free for drinks and a little action, I bet there’s no trouble finding applicants for these jobs. Second, who pays for this kind of busy work? This nun…
Read More…ummer Games. But the Pew Forum’s findings are worth remembering: A growing number of urban, educated, 20-something Chinese men and women are increasingly interested in the topic. More on religion: a story last week from the Columbus Dispatch reported that United Methodist congregations “could share pastors and combine churches with a Lutheran denomination under a partnership approved by the denomination last week.” (The Evangelical Lutheran Church…
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…ty enabling them to take over a number of jobs, from waiters to nurses to 9-1-1 operators. Low-skilled workers have been displaced en masse, spawning the “We Are People” movement. But Humans isn’t concerned with the politics of this world so much as it is with the emotional toll it might take on a middle class family like the Hawkins, who purchase a synth they call Anita in the pilot episode. We see the mother, Laura Hawkins, cringe when her young…
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…ic cosmology, there are a large number of mortal creatures—most of them non-human—inhabiting a spectacular 31-tiered cosmos, from the hell beings and hungry ghosts way down below to the (mortal) gods and goddesses in the heavens far above. There is karma, which you spend countless lives trying to work off. Once that’s finished, one of two things can happen. If you are of the Theravada school you are extinguished like a blown-out candle, entering n…
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…arge number of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithfulness no longer present even among the faithful. They ask about the c…
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…Big Push for Midwives, an advocacy organization for expanding access to out-of-hospital care, says that home birth advocacy is “probably the only grassroots movement that includes roughly equal numbers of pro-life and pro-choice individuals. We often hear shock from legislatures, saying they have never before seen these two groups come together on the same piece of legislation.” Shaye Miller, previously the member chairwoman at Nebraska Friends of…
Read More…matically in the past five decades. In 1967, there were probably fewer than 250,000 self-identifying Muslims in the United States: today, according the poll, there are about 3.35 million. So, the Muslim community is likely ten times larger than it was fifty years ago–though Muslims still account for only one percent of the total U.S. population. The growth of the Muslim community is largely due to immigration. In 1965, the Immigration and Naturali…
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…ng like the millenial South if they want to stick around. * I’m using data from The ARDA, which break down membership by state, but which apparently don’t match the SBC’s self-reported numbers. If anyone from the convention has state-level data they want to send me, I’ll gladly update the analysis….
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