Religion Dispatches
…e lower frequencies of the white American public. But I live in one state, Colorado, where Hillary Clinton actually outperformed polling expectations, and won by over two points. (New Mexico appears to be the only other state where Clinton’s polling numbers were under her actual totals. Everywhere else, it was the opposite, with wildly divergent projections versus actuals). Most of the West, excluding the Mormon belt, gave Clinton large margins of…
Read More…gure out the rest.” A mass resignation event is scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City this Saturday where an attorney will be on hand to help. For those who live further away, there is an online guide to having one’s name removed from the record of the Mormon Church. Africa: Gay Ugandans Regret Fleeing to Kenya; Christian UN Refugee Staff Refuse to Assist The BBC’s Emmanual Igunza wrote this week about gay Ugandans who regret having fled to Ke…
Read More
…nt Families, Same Love” have been sent to every school in Ireland, show “a number of families from different backgrounds – from same-sex parents to single parents, from grandparents raising a child to a childless couple with a dog.” The poster is meant to help teachers create inclusive classrooms and deter bullying. But the conservative Catholic Iona Institute, which led opposition to the marriage equality referendum, is arguing that religious sch…
Read More
…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…
Read More
…vering something up. My favorite McMurtry book is The Evening Star (1992). Aurora Greenway’s life after death is my brand of triumph. But my first McMurtry is forever The Last Picture Show (1966). My mother recommended I read it in order to understand my father. He grew up bookish near Archer City and became an uncommonly nonjudgmental Methodist pastor. To say the novel is about loss is to state the obvious. It’s in the title. What film critics mi…
Read More…mmitted to use my little bit of savings to pay for this once in a lifetime trip and then my sister dies suddenly leaving me the beneficiary of her life insurance policies. The cost for the trip was secured and as the year wore on I simply waited for my return to the US to begin my hunt for a travel agency to handle the details. My first question was about the visa. Having been stalled at the embassy when I tried to make hajj almost three decades a…
Read More
…he listened and took notes to share with other General Authorities back in Salt Lake City. At the conclusion of the hour, he apologized for the pain he was witnessing. According to attendee Carol Lynn Pearson, a Mormon author and longtime advocate of LGBT concerns, Elder Jensen said, “To the full extent of my capacity, I say that I am sorry… I know that many very good people have been deeply hurt, and I know that the Lord expects better of us.” An…
Read More
…ox copy job in history—the same firm built both buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, p…
Read More…actics. Would that he took a lesson from cooler heads back in the state of Utah, where just a few months ago religious leaders and lawmakers collaborated in the creation of a principled new Utah Compact on immigration reform heralded as a timely departure from the dead-end extremism of Arizona’s SB 1070 and praised nationwide as a model of “good sense and sanity.” What works so well about the Utah approach to immigration? It demonstrates respect f…
Read More…Debra Nussbaum Cohen reports in Haaretz that following news of the Israel trip, the Southern Poverty Law Center highlighted AFA’s “extensive track record of bigotry and hate,” and urged RNC members to boycott the trip. (None have.) “Our issue is not with these folks going to Israel, which is an important ally and important for international policy,” Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project told Cohen. “Our issue is that one of o…
Read More