Religion Dispatches
…groups on Israeli-Palestinian issues. In addition, he was the author of a number of books, the latest of which urged the United States to get muscular with Iran. In February, after being courted by Team McCain for more than in year, Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for the presidency. Then Talk2Action’s Bruce Wilson got busy. He delved into the pastor’s sermons, his writing and public commentaries. Wilson found that Hagee’s sermons were riddled wi…
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…le from its ranks and fights against their rights, ignores the diminishing number of priests and the effects of this shortage on Church communities, and calls on Catholics to form the “perfect society” resembling the ecclesiology of Opus Dei. It is no surprise that Pope Benedict comes from a country—Germany—where the percentage of Church members attending Sunday mass is one of the lowest in the world. Strict adherence to orthodoxy will not be popu…
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…inant models of analysis: number crunching and psychology. Greenspan was a number cruncher, says Brooks, and unfortunately, human psychology caught up with him. Greenspan saw real estate values continuing to soar with no end in sight and allowed himself to be persuaded that they would never stop rising, and certainly would never fall. So he never had to think about petty psychological realities, like a crisis of confidence, never mind an actual pa…
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…uing a host of Obama missteps including complaints about the reversal of a number of Bush administration executive orders. Conservative evangelical leaders will engage in a spirited and steadfast attempt to rebuild and reinvigorate a wounded movement, leading to the US Postal Service and direct-mail companies experiencing a surge in business as urgent fundraising appeals pepper the mailboxes and inboxes of religious right supporters. At its worst—…
Read More…venue in 2007. Americans United points out on its website that there are a number of other important religious right organizations to be aware of, including Gary Bauer’s American Values, Rick Scarborough’s Vision America, and Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. An expanded version of the Church & State story is available here. ++++++++++ New Coalition takes on Christian Zionism Before the end of the year, the Los Angeles Times reported in…
Read More…understand that these measures will be met with some resistance and that a number of taboos related to the topic still persist,” he wrote, “However, as President, it is my duty to ensure that the personal beliefs and customs of some do not limit the human rights of others.” Part of the resistance to marriage equality in Mexico comes from the Catholic Church and other religious leaders. This week KUTV in Salt Lake City reported that Mormon Church o…
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…ists. From the Ten Commandments, to the ten avatars of Vishnu (Krishna was number eight), to Buddhism’s ten precepts, religions are all about systems, ethical prescriptions—or proscriptions—and grand schemes. Order out of chaos is the name of the game. All this to suggest that the Top Ten list is obviously something deeply ingrained in the human experience. So here, without further preamble, RD’s picks for the Ten Best of 2008’s Religion Top Ten l…
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…o, like those men of old, know what to do.” DeMoss has collaborated with a number of her fellow speakers before. In 2002, she edited a compilation of essays on submission and headship entitled Biblical Womanhood in the Home, which drew contributions from Kassian, Hunt, and other complementarian matriarchs, such as Dorothy Kelley Patterson, who with her husband, Paige Patterson, created the homemaking degree and curriculum introduced at Southwester…
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…ew thousand words over their original word limit, but I still had to cut a number of compelling stories of people who have struggled with body shame because of internalized cultural/religious norms and narratives about weight, disability, chronic pain or illness. I also had to omit some of my analyses of examples of the culture of physical improvement. For instance, in the chapter on aging, I nixed a rather lengthy critique I’d developed of Deepak…
Read More…clear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,” he was quoted as saying. “Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation. … God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth. The design of the Creator is written in nature.” Kaoma accuses Francis of playing “hi…
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