Religion Dispatches
…s become an important community for them. “It has now become more acceptable for people to state that they are questioning or no longer religious” says Hashman. “We are dedicated to free inquiry and freedom of expression, and that can come off as abrasive, but we believe it necessary for a free and democratic society.”…
Read More…killed the government’s plans for the national vote and called again for a free vote in the parliament. CNN has profiled some of the couples who are waiting, among them a man and woman who pledged four years ago not to marry until their gay friends could. BuzzFeed’s Lane Sainty reports: Many conservative commentators have characterised the LGBTI community as childish, petulant, and anti-democratic for opposing a national vote on marriage. But Grei…
Read More…and music, was devoted to his wife and daughters, and gave his money away freely. Jacoby makes a convincing case that Ingersoll belongs to the egalitarian and humanistic thread of American secularism rather than Social Darwinist thread. And, in fact, Ingersoll stoutly rejected the contempt for the “lower orders” (immigrants, people of color) that was being shown in the 1880s and onward by leading Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham…
Read More…ians view the acceptance of homosexuality by liberal Western churches as a betrayal of the values taught by the missionaries. This sense of betrayal is heightened by Christians’ sensitivity to accusations from cultural nationalists that they have forsaken authentically African traditions. Islamic partisans reproduce a version of this discourse by painting virtually any Nigerian Christian or secularist, or any Muslim who deviates from the orthodox…
Read More…es. Lebanese Muslims work predominately as businesspeople in the lucrative Free Trade Zone, one of the largest free trade ports in the world. In the city center, many residents are descendants of West Indian laborers on the Panama Canal throughout the twentieth century. The city has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Every year, a group of black Muslims in Colón hosts an event to celebrate Eid-ul-Udha, a holiday that marks the end…
Read More…opic: “We are Catholics. If someone wants to make another church, they are free to do so.” I think what he meant was, we men are the Catholics in charge and women who want to participate equally are free to form their own church. I can assure him on good authority that the process of forming new models of church is well underway with Catholic women serving the needs of the world. I can also brief him on the fact that some of the nuns with whom he…
Read More…, not a religious rights issue, but it gets to one of the complications of free exercise rights. Some areas of law operate vertically, let’s say, since they’re mostly self-referential and one can acquire expertise in them without much reference to other areas of law. But religious rights work horizontally, as they come into interaction, and conflict, with many other categories of law. And it’s impossible to be expert in all types of law, even for…
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…repeating: not all Black people wish to be conscripted into this fight for freedom. Most wish to embrace anonymity, enjoying the mundane things other humans are afforded. Aren’t we in a strange hell then, that asserting the desire to live free from trauma and be seen as a human is considered more of an assault on America’s sacred institutions than, say, murdering a capitol police officer? As perverse as it is, even my aspiration for an ordinary ex…
Read More…ing for the sake of investment and innovation and creating a different and better tomorrow hinges on that last term: tomorrow. Take that away, and the system really does collapse. When rapacious quasi-capitalists start acting like there is no tomorrow, then that’s when it really hits the fan. That shift in temporal orientation actually destroys the system. And what we have witnessed in the last half-generation since Ronald Reagan first sold the rh…
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…use they are outspoken opponents of Christian nationalism. Clearly we need better language to address anti-democratic Christian beliefs. So how does one responsibly cover Christian nationalists these days? To begin with, we must find language that doesn’t allow for the easy whitewashing of “respectable” Christians who hold authoritarian theological beliefs. In order to do this, journalists and commentators need not eschew the rhetoric of Christian…
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