Religion Dispatches
…tualized Thanksgiving meals or the “click, click, click” of the computer mouse in response to “free shipping!” “40 % off!” or “Buy one get one free!” in the United States, we are gluttonous consumers of material goods (and food, but that is a whole other subject). The value and consequences of shopping in dominant US culture puts the consumer on a roller-coaster ride. One year we are told that excessive, unwise spending and its resultant debt have…
Read More…power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at play in Francis’ homily. The Pope, after all, listed yoga alongside catechism classes and so did not set it apart as a practice that Catholics should avoid altogether, as…
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…extremist, incoherent view of science and religion. Which is a shame, because among all his breezy posturing is the kernel of a very good point. Krauss is upset about Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk whose decision to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples has set off a national firestorm (and a number of incisive RD articles). Krauss points out, correctly, that if we allow Davis to use her political station to interfere with government conduc…
Read More…ponents of same-sex marriage—a bizarre formulation of the Establishment Clause. He concludes: Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens. Marriage e…
Read More…annot be comfortably categorized as evangelical or nonevangelical, and because so many enlistees identify themselves simply as “Christian,” it is difficult to ascertain cumulative numbers. Military officials say the government is not promoting the change in the chaplain corps. Instead religious leaders who recruit for the military attribute it to factors including the general shortage of Catholic priests, the liberal denominations’ discomfort with…
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…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…tian. What’s more, though, is how Christian candidates who’ve done much to promote a lack of religious freedom for other religions (e.g., Michele Bachmann’s worry that sharia will “usurp the Constitution” or Newt Gingrich’s calls to ban sharia law because it is “a comprehensive political, economic and religious movement that seeks to impose sharia—Islamic law—upon all aspects of global society”) or who have done little to tamp it down (e.g., Rick…
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…w could I explain to my peers that I couldn’t go out on a Friday night because I had Sabbath dinner or that the fabric and makeup of my family was just different than theirs? Jerry Garcia (right) and keyboardist Vince Welnick perform at the Los Angeles Coliseum on June 1, 1991. Photo by Herb Greene from the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz. Used with the gracious permission of the photographer. So there I was, a 14-year-old freshman trying t…
Read More…r and their children.” (The infertile, asexual, post-menopausal, and child-free by choice need not apply.) Anderson echoes precisely what same-sex proponents have been saying all along with regard to children: that the desire to marry is in fact a desire to be more traditional. As Frank Bruni put it, gays and lesbians are no longer cultural rebels; “We’re aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservativ…
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…oard of overstepping the First Amendment and infringing on their rights to free religious exercise and free speech.” Among the colleges and seminaries that spurn regional accreditation, many justify their decision by citing freedom from governmental oversight, a position compatible with the conservative mentality often dominant at such institutions. Ideologically consistent, this claim has the ancillary benefit of helping its makers dodge the cost…
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