Religion Dispatches
…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…
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…sons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears of terrorism. People want relief. But if no solution presents itself, either lassitude or…
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…to convert (or be asked to convert) for the sake of food, education, healthcare and other daily necessities. Obama might have been right about Mahatma Gandhi’s shock over the state of India’s religious affairs, but the latter’s response might have been directed towards India’s institutionalization of Christian soul-harvesting. After all, as Gandhi noted so presciently: “It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after th…
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…ops unambiguously associated the requirement to opt out of the [Affordable Care Act’s] contraception mandate with threats to destroy Christianity in the Middle East. They drew parallels to “governments who try to squash and destroy religious liberty,” and even to the specter of ISIS beheading those it considers apostates to the faith. As I have noted, there was a notable uptick in white Catholic concern about the “religious liberty” issue after th…
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…that old Job-ian classic, “Why does God allow suffering?” But we should be careful here; Google search data offers a skewed sliver of insight into the full range of human motivation and behavior. The population of people who ask Google about God may not be reflective of the full population of people who have divine-related questions. And while Stephens-Davidowitz engages in some discussion about the social trends that drive these search patterns,…
Read More…hts Watch: Uganda’s criminal code includes a colonial-era law prohibiting “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” with possible sentences of up to life in prison. The law very rarely leads to prosecutions, but police have used it as a pretext to shut numerous events targeting LGBT audiences and their allies over the past several years, such as the entire 2017 annual Pride Week scheduled events, parades and a fashion show in previous Pride W…
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…ce to meet that need,” he says. Gather the Children Karen Tipps, full-time caretaker at the shrine, adds: “A lot of people say well, why do you think it happened now? Well, every apparition is meant for its certain time in history.” According to the story, the Holy Mother asked Brise to “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.” The message about educating the children, she says, is especially ti…
Read More…on a scandal based on emails leaked to a Chilean newspaper showing how two cardinals, including a close adviser to Pope Francis, conspired last year to prevent a gay man who had been abused by a priest from being named to a sex abuse commission created by the pope — and to block him from speaking with other bishops. The man, Juan Carlos Cruz, did meet this month with parishioners in the city of Osorno who oppose Francis’ decision to appoint as hea…
Read More…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…
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…erica. The conspiracy theorists themselves draw parallels between the red scare of the Cold War era and the current shari’ah scare. Former CIA head Woolsey, who served on the same CPAC panel as McCarthy and is also a contributor to the CSP’s “Team B” report, said at CPAC that the goals of radical Islamists are “roughly parallel to communists in the ’50s and ’60s… We’re in a war with terrorists but that’s not the end. We’re at war with those who wa…
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