Religion Dispatches
…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…
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…trates how a different context for a work of art creates new meaning for a new audience. Today, the civil rights battle over marriage equality becomes the new backdrop for a protest musical peppered with religious imagery at every turn—lesbian and gay folks are left hoping that we may finally be experiencing the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Hair, Circa 1968 The original production of Hair was a departure for the Broadway stage because of its ra…
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…
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…list elites who have planned and prepared for this opportunity to impose a new world order: a new global government with a new economic system. In the spiritual context he will be enacting a Satanic plot to usurp the role and identity of the Messiah and gain the adulation of the world. Wielding great military power this self-aggrandizing human savior will force an end to war and impose a secular humanist paradigm and religious pluralism as a remed…
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…bad taste, has already dubbed the arrest of several prominent Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis last week the case of the “kosher nostra”. It is an ugly story, and not just how the Post tells it: alleged corruption among ultra-Orthodox leadership in the form of money laundering through charities and, even worse, strong-armed trafficking in human organs. Not two years after the breaking of the Agriprocessors scandal, we have another searing example of…
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…n extraordinary modern achievement. And it’s uniquely universal: people in New Guinea set their watches by the same standard as people in New Mexico. Ideological enemies find common ground; the United States and North Korea might not agree on much, but we both set our clocks by Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Systems this total have a strange knack for becoming invisible. Here’s the anthropologist David Graeber, talking about the capitalist market, but…
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