Religion Dispatches
…wers? Does she read the paper and say “What the fudge? We were at war with Afghanistan?” Nope. It’s her clothes, her musical references, her wearable technology, and her outdated slang that mark her as off. She plays cassettes on a Walkman. She doesn’t know what a selfie is, or how to text, or the words to Katy Perry’s “Firework.” Some who meet her in New York think she’s clueless because she hails from the middle of the country. (When Kimmy expre…
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…or added to the pressure to cancel the Massimadi festival, saying it would promote homosexuality and that impoverished Haiti had other priorities.” Australia: Poll confirms majority support for marriage equality, rejection of plebiscite A new poll released this week that most Australians support marriage equality but not the government’s plan to hold a national plebiscite on whether the law should be changed to recognize same-sex couples’ right to…
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…rdinals openly challenging Francis on marriage and sexuality, is slavishly promoting Burke’s favorite American white Catholic nationalist, Bannon, with star billing on its home page. The institute’s top office-bearers, Burke and his henchman, the media-savvy Breitbart contributor Benjamin Harnwell, are also encouraging Benito Mussolini fan Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s Northern League, and Muslim-baiting far-right Catholic poster girl Marion Le Pen,…
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…share a similar arc: the subjects enlist, serve multiple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, are horrifically injured, struggle in the aftermath of war, and then find meaning and purpose. Spouses, golf, mountain bikes, children, and God all play roles helping Bush’s wounded warriors heal and recover. But Portraits of Courage doesn’t present a sanitized version of war. Yes, it trades in expected patriotic narratives of sacrifice and triumph, but it also…
Read More…ter New Year’s Day in 2018, a suicide attack in a market in central Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 20. The Amaq News Agency of ISIS said that the movement claimed credit. They also gave ISIS credit for attacks in Nigeria and in Egypt a few days before. Earlier in the year a group of Muslim separatists said to be associated with ISIS took over a town in Mindanao, the insurgent region of Southern Philippines, and controlled it for months in a stand-off…
Read More…utside our own beliefs. The religion of the majority cannot be encouraged, promoted, or endorsed using non-voluntary communal funds. We live in a time when Christianity is viewed as the “civilized” religion, and Christians with vastly different doctrines and beliefs espouse tolerance and comradery with one another. It has not always been so and it is naive to believe that it will continue to be so. There have been times not far beyond the short ho…
Read More…ds. It didn’t matter, I told myself, if hundreds or even thousands died in Afghanistan, or if tax cuts would hurt the most vulnerable, or if stem cell research could save lives. There was always the trump card: How could I vote for someone who would allow millions of ‘unborn babies’ to die? Abortion is the central political issue for many contemporary evangelicals. It is the reason many white conservative Christians will tell you they voted for Tr…
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…sters they looked at me in disbelief. Despite my reasoning that the war in Afghanistan was leading to the deaths of innocent people and that more support for the poor, for single parents, and for education all seemed to align with Jesus’ message, my spiritual elders always repeated the refrain back to me: abortion is murder. However, some are now doubting whether or not abortion still drives white evangelical politics. Last week the sociologist of…
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…he United Nations. People from Syria—but also Mali, Gambia, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere—are streaming into Europe by sea or by foot. Most of them are not Catholic, but Muslim. As I wrote earlier this year, the Catholic Church has been at the forefront of welcoming migrants in Italy; more recently, Pope Francis has called on parishes to take in migrant families. At Centro Astalli, Muslim men go to a back dining room in a loud, crowded…
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…ndidates argued that we needed a substantial military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan to safeguard the freedoms of both Americans and the wider world. In 2010 and beyond, conservative candidates have employed a different notion of freedom, one that has absolutely nothing to do with serving the government (or military) or the public to preserve someone else’s freedoms. All of these are essentially conservative arguments; they are all in the wheelh…
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