Religion Dispatches
…eel that they can suffer some serious consequences if they speak out. In a number of cases, someone would start an interaction with me and then go, “Look. I can’t even speak with you.” They didn’t even want to go off the record. Have you received any backlash from some of the subjects profiled in the film? So far, there hasn’t been any backlash. These are very savvy politicians and they got to where they are by ignoring this issue. I would be surp…
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…rtray a group of Jewish elders trying to determine how they will explain a number of events, all having to do with the State of Israel, to a young daughter; every line begins with the words “tell her.” The culmination is a bloody, vitriolic speech, defending the Gaza war of this past winter. The intended effect is clearly alienation from the speaker: Churchill has allowed the play to be distributed freely, so long as money is gathered at performan…
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…from then-US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself. Why place this at number ten? Well, for a man who used to pal around with génocidaires and publicly lobbied on Mobutu’s behalf, calling for the assassination of a leftist dictator is pretty standard. Robertson’s mistake was doing it on TV in front of an audience of millions. In addition, his call for the US to assassinate Chavez is one of the remarks that public pressure eventually forced Ro…
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…y, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however. Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prague, everyone except the Pope can see the…
Read More…ted partners of U.S. citizens who are gay or lesbian, is compiling a large number of religious leaders, organizations, and denominations, to sign on to a letter supporting the legislation. As I reported last year, UAFA would correct a glaring inequality in our current immigration law: there are 36,000 bi-national couples in the United States—same-sex couples in which one is a US citizen and the other faces possible deportation if a partner or spo…
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…hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparag…
Read More…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…
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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…having a husband meant that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not Denzel.” Women as Sluts, Men as Savages As the Religious Right continues to gut women’s rights, its cultural propaganda suggests that the only way a woman can truly be validated as a moral being is through the policing of her body and her sexuality. Tragically, some of the most vociferous defenders of this r…
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…e in the United States are black churches, as varied in orientation as the number of congregations. There are millions of African American Christians housed in thousands of churches across the country; some of them rather large and others small in number. In using this phrase, we must remain mindful of the similarities and differences between local congregations, spread across urban and rural areas that the term, “Black Church,” easily covers. It…
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