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Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…a, suffice it to say that such an apparatus exists in the form of a superstructural bureaucracy that regulates monasteries from above, and an infrastructural apparatus (including government informants) embedded within monasteries to control them from below. This bureaucracy allows for control of various aspects of monks’ and nuns’ individual and institutional lives: —The Chinese government (or one of its various proxies) issues or denies formal re…

A Time to Break Down, and A Time to Build Up: Reinventing Ministry in Post-Katrina New Orleans

By Ellen Blue

…st-Katrina New Orleans Ellen Blue Wipf & Stock August 4, 2016 My heart was breaking, too, since New Orleans is my home. My son was in the city as a first responder during the storm, and his family’s home had to be bulldozed. The fear and grief were very personal for me. Yet living and teaching in Tulsa gave me the distance that allowed some level of objectivity that UMC people living in south Louisiana couldn’t hope to achieve. It was clear this b…

Right Wing Disputes Lesbian Motherhood Research

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…al, academic and total competence. They also showed lower rates in social, rule-breaking, aggressive problem behavior. Despite these glowing results that children are not just surviving, but thriving in lesbian households, the “pro-family” spokesperson picked by CNN, Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, disputed the study because it was funded by pro-gay groups. “That proves the prejudice and bias of the study,” she said. “T…

There are Nonproductive Ways of Listening to Each Other: Deborah Jian Lee on the New Era

By The Editors

…hear out “the other side.” As someone who straddles multiple cultures and worlds, it’s something I’ve done for a long while, and I’ve learned, especially in times like these, that there are both productive and non-productive ways of doing this. A few months after the election, I was speaking at a mostly white Christian college in Virginia when a white man approached the mic and started berating me for suggesting that LGBTQ people and other minori…

Nashville Cats Play Dumb As Backwards Preachers

By Daniel Schultz

…ipture with sensitivity and nuance, and forgoing the temptation to see the world simplistically. More important, it means that pastors and other religious leaders owe their followers consideration of their full life and faith. It means that we understand their loves as multi-faceted, their relationships more than one dimensional, their desires to reach God legitimate, their world confusing, ever-shifting, sometimes frightening, sometimes capable o…

I’tikaf: Sacred Solitude

By Amina Wadud

…to themselves and the husband and/or able-bodied men in the family. It’s true, the men get no vacation days for menstruation, but in most families, women are still the ones most heavily engaged in food preparation. That is, fasting or not, they arise before the suhur is consumed to prepare what will be partaken. They also prepare food for the younger children on the regular non-Ramadan fasting schedule. The children are not fasting. They are hung…

Howling at the Moon

By Amina Wadud

…iving to ourselves, and that does not purify. But that only works when we truly live in these networks or truly see to their needs on a regular basis. If you know you cannot help them all year round, maybe this is one time when you can. Also, unlike tithing the amount cannot go to the mosque, to build a mosque to pay for the imam or mosque leader. This is another kind of sadaqah, or gift-giving, distinct from zakah. You can give any amount you wan…

Is This Light?

By Amina Wadud

…taken as Islamic law, when what people really mean is fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence — since shari’ah is more abstract than law). In Pakistan or Nigeria an overinflated interest in penal codes, or the hudud ordinances, has left women to face the brunt of this Islamization project — and usually in a bad way. So if a woman says she has been raped that is taken as confession to a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and she is punished (again, sinc…

Time is on Our Side

By Amina Wadud

…ve up imsak as the time marker and stuck with the time of fajr. In today’s world, Muslims all over have printed schedules to mark the precise time for suhur, the time of the fajr prayer (as well as the other 4 prayers), the time of sun rise, and the time formaghrib, the prayer at sun set. Especially maghrib, because that’s when the fasting ends. Precise, detailed. When my kids were younger they would check the calendar and get the sunset time prog…

‘Almost Like Praying’: The Religious Work of ‘Hamilton’ Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda

By Spencer Dew

…humans—predicated on a basic emotional ability which, in turn, he claims Trump lacks. “If the government was commensurate with the response of the American people we would be on the road to recovery,” Miranda told Billboard. “I’ve got little kids breaking their piggy banks or families delaying their vacations because they’re donating money, or even people saying instead of presents for my birthday send them to Puerto Rico. My faith in our country…