Religion Dispatches
…sy details of sectarian schism), McCain’s terse description of North Phoenix does not supply nearly enough explanation for what is a jolting swap, like trading the Jetta for a Suburban. Yet McCain supplies no wake-up call, no re-awakening of his spirit to explicate his substitution of Sunday affections. He offers no specifications of the kind of Christ that pressed him from a the Book of Common Prayer to the Baptist Faith and Message. Nor, as ment…
Read More…sy details of sectarian schism), McCain’s terse description of North Phoenix does not supply nearly enough explanation for what is a jolting swap, like trading the Jetta for a Suburban. Yet McCain supplies no wake-up call, no re-awakening of his spirit to explicate his substitution of Sunday affections. He offers no specifications of the kind of Christ that pressed him from a the Book of Common Prayer to the Baptist Faith and Message. Nor, as ment…
Read More…sure that an equal age of consent applies to both same-sex and different-sex sexual activity,” which could be the lead in to overturn Section 377 of the Indian Penal code that still criminalizes consensual same-sex conduct, a remnant from an 1860 British Colonial Era law that exists in many constitutions across the Commonwealth countries even today. Malta: Civil Union & Adoption Law, Trans Protections in Constitution This week the parliament of M…
Read More…buggery laws in 2003.) In Belize, antigay laws extend beyond the criminal code: Homosexuals are still technically an explicit class of prohibited immigrants, along with prostitutes, “any idiot,” the insane and “any person who is deaf and dumb.” ….In Belize, church leaders are granted deference in the press and by lawmakers on social issues. But in large part, the ecclesiastical focus has always been on the spiritual rather than the political real…
Read More…ial legacy, including the mention of “vices against nature”. Now not even the most contorted of arguments could claim that acts of gay sex between consenting adults are somehow illegal….
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…ally and they haven’t done well financially. Churches that stick to orthodoxy do better over time because in part it’s only those churches that tend to create families that can be of size and carry on the Christian tradition. This harkens back to Dean Kelley’s 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, which argued that liberal denominations were losing a battle of ideas to stricter, more conservative communions. The new twist here is Ebers…
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…fter discriminatory legislation that would ban the popularization of homosexual relations and promotion of the homosexual lifestyle was proposed in 2014. “Life was easier three years ago,” says a 21-year-old gay man who regularly attends the club. “You could be on public transport and talk about LGBT stuff and nobody would notice because they did not really know what it was. But since the legislation was introduced, a lot of the population knows w…
Read More…tudents could possibly exist at his school: “It’s simple, really. Homosexuals can’t exist at Patrick Henry College because the students sign an honor code,” Farris claimed. “[Homosexuals] could not sign our honor code,” Farris said, adding that he considers the actions of gay men and women “sinful.” “Part of the honor code is to be sexually pure,” he added. Baratko speaks to a couple of the bloggers, who say they were inspired by other blogs at…
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…Pan Amazon region do not inspire any confidence that this one will be any better, just a scaled-up version of the same. For example, there were high hopes for the Amazonian Synod with a Latin American pope. But the well-documented requests for women to be included in ordained ministry and for married men to be ordained as priests all evaporated when votes were taken and the papal document emerged. What would motivate these people whose hopes were…
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…before the State of Israel was established, conservative evangelicals had expressed extreme hostility to Islam, “the imposter religion,” as it was known in some late 19th- and early 20th-century Protestant circles. A century and a half ago Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, spent a few weeks in Jerusalem. He was despondent before the visit, and even more so afterwards. Jerusalem, for Melville, represented the past, not the future. In his journa…
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