Religion Dispatches
…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…
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…episode of being held hostage by her husband—an associate pastor in their Kansas Baptist church—for close to twenty hours after he’d nearly fractured her skull. Andersen was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention, where she heard an unremitting message of “submission, submission, submission.” She saw this continual focus reflected in her ex-husband’s denunciations, while he detained her, of women who wanted to “rule over men.” Though Andersen…
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…good move. When I got to the lobby another something told me to dig out my phone and check it for messages. Sure enough, I had one from an unfamiliar number. A woman’s voice said Bedi was still sleeping, exhausted from the previous day’s overseas flight, and needed to reschedule our interview for that afternoon. I called the number back, convinced the opportunity was lost. “I’m here at the hotel now, but I’m booked solid this afternoon—” “Hold on,…
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…just doing what Rosa Parks would have done,” added another.) This sort of bargain-basement martyrdom conferred onto pro-lifers has a flip side as well, vilifying abortion- and contraception-rights advocates as modern-day Klanswomen. In late January, the religious right organized against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed inclusion of contraception in the stimulus package, in part by denouncing her as a bigot and a racist who wanted “to reduce…
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…the translation. An historical theologian, Amanda Quantz at St. Mary’s in Kansas did the first draft. Carmela Leonforte-Plimack, whose Ph.D. is from the University of Rome assisted me in refining the translation. Archimandrite Robert F. Taft, SJ, who as editor of Orientalia Christiana Periodica first published the article, went over the completed work. As we were working on the manuscript, we located Vagaggini’s 1500-word requested intervention b…
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…r pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this year, when Jawaid and…
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…biding Liberty-minded Patriots only. So go back to your sh#thole Sanctuary City and live in your crime infested streets.” In case you have any doubts about the import of that statement, the site also states: “This means Snowflakes, Liberals, Socialists, Marxists, Communists and other Tyrants that hate our Constitutional Republic and the Bill of Rights are not allowed to engage our services.” (The erratic incorrect capitalization is in the original…
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…l-Mart pharmacy employee from Houston, who “told me he spent a week at the Kansas City IHOP, where young people pray around the clock, which he called ‘powerful and life-changing.’” IHOP, he told me, “stirs young people” and “keeps them continuously alert about the end-times. So they can’t be distracted because they’re continuously being bombarded by the preaching of the end-times so it’s continuously on their heart and their minds.” This is how I…
Read More…made by 13 parishioners, a nun who coordinated victims’ assistance for the Kansas City diocese, and a priest, the Rev. James Connell. It was backed by an online petition signed by 113,000 Catholics. They asked Pope Francis to remove Bishop Robert Finn, who was convicted in 2012 of a misdemeanor charge of failing to report a priest who had pornographic images of children on his computer. The priest is currently serving 50 years for taking the pictu…
Read More…ty about the difficulty of identifying signs of radicalization, it seems a Kansas City cop would be able to do so in the course of a writing a ticket. According to the Brennan Center study, 40% of the terror plots that have been thwarted by law enforcement have been discovered, at least in part, thanks to tips from Muslims. Yet surveillance, infiltration, and even what community members consider entrapment has left them feeling targeted as crimina…
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