Religion Dispatches
…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…
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…. Of course there is no real moment when “America was born.” That a pub in South London is as suitable a christening place as a beach in New England speaks to the arbitrary power of myths. As concerns the religious separatists of 1620, legend can be as potent as fact. The pilgrims, and later the Puritans, constitute an origin mythos for American identity. The pilgrims were Christian, but in many ways we have made the pilgrims themselves characters…
Read More…. Of course there is no real moment when “America was born.” That a pub in South London is as suitable a christening place as a beach in New England speaks to the arbitrary power of myths. As concerns the religious separatists of 1620, legend can be as potent as fact. The pilgrims, and later the Puritans, constitute an origin mythos for American identity. The pilgrims were Christian, but in many ways we have made the pilgrims themselves characters…
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…Dr. Tiller’s former colleagues, reopens her mentor’s former clinic as the South Wind Women’s Center, that fight begins again. Full-Spectrum Care South Wind Women’s Center is now housed in a building so central to Wichita’s recent history that it’s often referred to simply by its street address: 5107 E. Kellogg Drive. The clinic is a flat-roofed, largely windowless structure, partially enclosed by a tall wooden fence and fronting on a busy road th…
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…this direction that troubled more traditionalist Episcopalians, among them South Carolina bishop Mark J. Lawrence, who joined deputies from the diocese in “differentiating themselves” from the actions of the voting bodies by leaving the General Convention. (Note to Mr. Askie: No evidence of anyone “storming out” is to be found in reports from the South Carolina bishop and deputies themselves or those who attended to their concerns, even when they…
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…able at the blog of the European Journal of International Law. The role of South Africa in current UN disputes over LGBT human rights is being disputed. South Africa had been the sponsor of a key 2011 resolution at the Human Rights Council, but has since stepped back. Mamba Online reported his week that human rights experts believe the South African government is saying one thing and doing another regarding the move to suspend the new independent…
Read More…arents and his therapist that he was stable enough to return home to North Carolina, so he could look after the family home. Back in North Carolina, on Saturday, September 10, Bryan bought a gun at Wal-Mart. He fed the family’s animals, cleaned the house, handed the keys to a neighbor, sent a message to a family member that they needed to come to the house, and then went on the front lawn and shot himself. News of Bryan’s suicide immediately circu…
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…of this fall’s Equality Ride. “We wait to be rejected.” Higgins grew up in South Carolina and now makes her home in Minneapolis, where she’s one of a handful of fulltime staffers with Soulforce Q, the young-adult division of Soulforce. “There is a sort of redemptive suffering in standing here,” she says as a brisk autumn wind reddens her cheeks. “A lot of times students at the places we go aren’t able to be out as gay, so that’s the idea of these…
Read More…advising them to do away with their prejudices and listen to one another. South Africa: Dutch Reformed Church OK’s gay ordination, unions The Dutch Reformed Church has voted to acknowledge same-sex unions and to allow gay ministers to be ordained without requiring them to remain celibate. Dutch Reform Church moderator Nelis Janse van Rensburg said: “It is historical because with this decision we actually are at a point where there can be no doubt…
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… In “A Million Little Fibers,” a similarly fictionalized story by Towelie, South Park’s resident sentient, pot-smoking towel (it’s a long story), is defended for the inspiration it has provided others: “What’s the big deal? His book helped people; why does it matter that he made some stuff up?” This appreciation for the value of a well-told story extends to a love of the story-teller. The Joseph Smith in The Book of Mormon is (like the South Park…
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