Religion Dispatches
…Board of Rabbis issued a statement against the hospital policy. So did the New York Protestant Council. The Diocese of New York fought to keep the policy as it was. After a 4 month fight, the Board of Hospitals agreed to change the policy, meaning that birth control would be allowed in the public hospitals of New York City. There were many fights like that. But in this current controversy, only one religious voice is being heard despite the fact t…
Read More…e’s just as strong a movement toward cities, as hipster evangelicals plant new churches in New York, Chicago, and L.A. with names like The Journey, The Awakening, and Revolution. But Palin is not a hipster evangelical. She is, as she tells us over and over, a small town girl. And she grew up in a small town church, one with a fondness for spiritual war and a wariness of cosmopolitanism. “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sin…
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…ublic conversation about poverty. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” Reagan’s caricature of the “welfare queen” cemented it in the American imaginary: By the time the “welfare queen” finally emerged on the national stage, the American pu…
Read MoreNew Washington Post On Faith blogger Jordan Sekulow wrote on the eve of the DADT repeal, “social conservatives are not enraged about the end of DADT.” If that’s true, then halleleujah. But just one month ago Sekulow wrote in the same pages, “If DADT is repealed, the American Center for Law & Justice is committed to advocating for the ability of military chaplains to do their job according to the dictates of their faith. The ACLJ has a long histor…
Read More…ul’s opposition to the Iraq War got his attention, said Wead, who says he knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and that “we were conned.” Wead, who was instrumental in intertwining religious conservatives in presidential politics, now says he’s undergone a conversion: he thinks evangelicals have been led astray by the culture war focus on establishing a “Christian nation.” He pointed to Paul’s support for building mosques, despite…
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…recites his mild variation on the usual rote declamation: “It’s time for a new way, a new set of ideas…and above all it’s time for a new president.” We’re invited to “Join the movement.” The latter notion worked so well for candidate Obama, although his campaign struggled to figure out how to translate the energy of so many young people into practical action after the inauguration. But the key difference between Paul’s rhetoric and the last succes…
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…isode we learn that the man who so despised tattoos, but had a significant number of them, acquired most of them in a short period of time, and acquired many through a particular practice in the back room of his own clock workshop. Paying one hundred dollars an hour to a tattoo artist, McLemore submitted to the needle, sometimes for a new piece, sometimes merely for more ink on top of old, a tattoo sunk on top of an existing tattoo, turning his bo…
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…hs of mutual benefit. Many Jewish peace advocates are not yet aware of the new myth they are implicitly telling, nor of the magnitude of change in Jewish life it can create. But new myths rarely arise by conscious effort. They simply grow organically as people pursue the goals they value most and talk to others about their efforts. Then one day someone wearing the mantle of authority (perhaps even a future prime minister of Israel) looks back and…
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…h, Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan administrations, and beyond. Racism is not new. Misogyny is not new. Xenophobia is not new. Our government’s continued alliances with fascists and theocrats? Not new. The things marginalized people are fighting today are frightening because their consequences are in our present and we can foresee further harm—but we must remember our past. I have spent a lot of time since November talking with people who grew up dur…
Read More…mn the anti-gay attacks on two teens and another man earlier this month in New York. This unimaginable hatred in the attacks that happened in the Bronx left me with a sinking feeling and a burning question: Who are we and who are we becoming? I think before we go any further as a nation, it’s time that we honestly examine ourselves. And to have a complete honest examination, we need to hear both the worst and the best. Hatred is growing in this co…
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