Religion Dispatches
…has upheld and every Democrat reversed, prohibits, by executive order, the use of U.S. family planning funds to NGOs abroad who use other funds to provide abortions or even referrals to abortion providers. It’s widely seen by reproductive health advocates, as Population Action International puts it, as “eroding family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries. There is no evidence that it has reduced the incidence of aborti…
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…noticed that I haven’t used the word “hate” yet. In fact, the only time I use “hate” is in this paragraph. That’s because the “hate” framework allows us to hide systemic oppression behind the inscrutable actions of individuals, of so-called “lone wolves.” It’s as inaccurate to use a framework of “hate” to describe a single person’s actions as it is to use a framework of “environmental friendliness” to describe a single person’s actions. Both fram…
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…copal churches functions less to “bridge and heal a wound that has existed between Rome and Anglicanism for nearly five hundred years” than as a salve for the sting of change that continues apace in every religious institution—the Roman Catholic Church included? Is the fantasy at work in the Maryland congregation’s appeal to the magisterial authority of the Roman Church is that changing churches can somehow stop the church from changing? Inventing…
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…tance of context, in practice its vague language and large net has been misused to target pro-Palestinian advocacy on college campuses and in legislation. For example, IHRA’s concern about criticizing Israel by a “double standard” has often been interpreted to mean that anyone who protests Israeli human rights violations without equal attention to other countries has a “double standard” and is therefore presumed guilty of antisemitism. It opens up…
Read More…ined “the Arabs living in that land right now under Israeli control have a better quality of life, they’re freer and more prosperous than in any other Arab country.” Gushee and Stassen, though, continue with a sharp rebuke of Christian Zionism and its role in the oppression of the Palestinians: This Christian version of Zionism matters deeply, not just because theology intrinsically matters, but because it is overwhelmingly clear that American eva…
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…ards, in thinking that religions make use of stories to convey moral lessons? What if, instead, stories make use of religions, for reasons all their own? While particular mythologies rise and fall, the use of narrative as a meaning-making machine endures—perhaps because we’ve always believed more in language than in God by any name. This review originally appeared in BookForum….
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…an on a Tel Aviv street and then turned his gun on himself, was trained to use a gun. In fact he had been working as a security guard. Among Israeli Jews, for whom there is universal military conscription, this type of work would not have been at all unusual, but among the ultra-Orthodox it was striking. For under Israeli law the ultra-Orthodox are exempt from the draft. All Haredi men and women are free from the responsibility of spending years i…
Read More…latter. Zuhura’s question is simple. Why ban Muslim women from fasting because of their period? I use the word women are exempted, because to make it a ban overlooks its corollary with other types of bleeding, thereby making menstruation some kind of problem. And although this problem has resulted, the fact that women are also exempted when not menstruating but lactating or pregnant I use to keep away from the word “ban.” If it was a ban then ther…
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…force that crushes the dreams of small business owners, the relationships between individuals and doctors, the rights of parents, and the freedom of religious believers. At the same time, he spoke of “millions of courageous conservatives” and “born again Christians” whose votes could restore an idealized constitutionalism and drive the big-government bureaucrats out of the American temple. Part of my goal in Superchurch is to help us better under…
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…e attention because of their notoriety within evangelical circles, and because their use of the term and involvement in deconstruction-oriented communities is legitimate. But here’s what David Jeremiah misses: It isn’t just well-known figures with professional histories in the evangelical entertainment industries or ministries who are ‘falling away.’ It’s tens of thousands of ordinary people, in all walks of life, who repudiate his version of the…
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