Religion Dispatches
…Abdul-Jabbar, who came straight into Sunni Islam. And in 1978, I came to admire the character of Venus Flytrap (played by Tim Reid) on WKRP in Cincinnati. On one episode in the final season (1982), a detective who was about to arrest Venus asked him if he was a Muslim. Since the time of my youth, while the Muslim population in North America has increased tremendously, the number of Muslim characters on television has remained negligible. The few t…
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…t. As the Christian right, bolstered by evangelical donors and the Trump administration, continues to undermine justice for LGBTQ people through religious exemptions based on a narrow theology, rhetoric like that of the Mississippi wedding hall owner gives one pause for thought. In states where same-sex marriages neither need to be solemnized nor honored, are interracial marriages far behind? And if people like Donna Russell believe their refusal…
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…abuse crisis including some Chilean bishops who covered up sexual abuse committed by their clergy. Francis publicly admitted that he was given faulty intelligence on that situation. He eventually reversed his initial defense of fellow clergymen and forced several Chilean bishops to resign. Francis can change his mind which is hopeful with regard to other issues. Unless one knows better in advance, it would be easy to conclude from the film that th…
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…re support for us.” Since the removal of David Silverman as its president amid allegations of financial conflicts of interest and sexual misconduct in 2018, American Atheists has also been at the forefront of diversifying the secular movement in practicing and promoting a broader, more intersectional approach to secular advocacy. The organization’s staff includes queer people, women, and African Americans in prominent roles. And, as it’s shifted a…
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…ie. The Pharaoh himself, Yul Brynner, dedicated the first such monument in Milwaukee in 1955, but it was later moved to private property so as not to violate church-state separation. A similar bill failed to pass in Texas last year, and it too prescribed the Commandments lite. While it’s tempting to let Olsen off the hook as an unoriginal copyist, he is the author of this bill and ultimately responsible for the content and the scriptural edits. So…
Read More…tion on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figu…
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…ovement, not just in the US, but in Europe as well, unites right-wing extremists, conservatives, and like-minded people from the political left and center behind their hatred of trans people. It’s merely the latest “wedge issue” the Right has sought to exploit—so far quite effectively—in order to radicalize people and recruit more to their hateful cause. Die Welt, owned by the Springer publishing house which recently acquired Politico, faced a fie…
Read More…ier might well have declared, offering data on the correlation between the number of pipers in a village and the number of butts in local church pews. Across the pond in the American colonies, religion was not faring much better. In his masterful reconstruction of American religious history, Awash in a Sea of Faith (from which the previous anecdote is drawn), Jon Butler reports that Christianity was “in crisis” in the New World: Pennsylvania aside…
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…is, too, is religion at its best. So, it’s okay to be inspired by these seemingly miraculous stories. In a nasty campaign season and a still-sluggish economy, they’re a welcome reprieve. And it’s okay to draw religious lessons from them, if that’s what you’re inclined to do. But those lessons should not be about a vindictive and arbitrary God who favors some athletes over others, but should be about the capacity of religion and spirituality to cau…
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…ISIS regularly decries the United States as a nation of hypocrites who promise freedom out of one side of the mouth and demonize minorities out of the other. ISIS propaganda calls the US an unsafe place for Muslims. Refugees fleeing from ISIS need somewhere to flee to. By banning refugees, Donald Trump vilifies the victims, deliberately conflating them with the perpetrators. ISIS is achieving its aims: a nationless population it can absorb into i…
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