Religion Dispatches
…run amok. These ladies, who call themselves Niqabitches, have done a great service in showing the inherent contradictions of the law, rather than just stating them. Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the video is when the female police officer, who will be required to ticket them in the near future, asks to take a picture of them. Sarkozy’s ban may have inadvertently created the sense of “Frenchness” in a way he didn’t anticipate. These women hav…
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…ive? Nope: evangelical and Catholic churches typically offer more than one service a week. Mainline congregations, which tend to be smaller, are open for business only on Sundays. As for the surprises, such as they are: although evangelicals are concentrated in the deep South, their activists aren’t, particularly: 26% of them live in the Midwest, while 29% of them call Dixie home. Also surprising is the rough regional parity: 27% of religious prog…
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…es that requiring the sisters to notify the Department of Health and Human Services that it intends to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate, as allowed under the so-called accommodation provided by the Obama administration, is actually a “permission slip where we authorize the use of our religious health plan to offer services that violate our beliefs and waive our protections under federal civil rights laws. That’s why they need our signature.” W…
Read More…re Act to allow insurers to opt-out of providing maternity care as a basic service, as many conservatives have requested, with the goal of reducing premiums. “We have what’s called an X chromosome, which means we can’t have a baby,” he said on a Houston radio show to justify the oft-repeated claim that requiring plans to cover the health care costs associated with a pregnancy is unfair to men. Setting aside whatever meaning we might make of the fa…
Read More…s story has made in the non-science press, at least not yet. Religion News Service noticed the discovery’s implications for the quickness of the origins of the universe. But I’ve seen little else about the human implications of this new snapshot of our human origins. Perhaps people are wary of overhyping, or not understanding the science. Fortunately as a religion writer I am subject to neither restriction. And when you see this video of the infor…
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…er the election, I reached out to a local imam and was invited to a prayer service. I wanted to show them physically that people of faith, especially those who claim to be Christian, weren’t against them and would stand with them in this climate. When I was invited to come to the mic, I made a confession. I confessed that, in the past, I had been part of the problem of Islamophobia. I had negative attitudes toward them. But then I realized that I’…
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…. With well over 100,000 deaths as of publication, more than the number of service members killed in World War I, America is living through an apocalyptic moment. But it’s also an apocalypse in the literal sense of an unveiling or disclosure—an unmasking. The coronavirus has unmasked how our lives are marked by a profound mutual dependence that challenges our self-understanding and political ideologies. It has unmasked a federal government capture…
Read More…insurance coverage is a moral good. Including contraceptives as a covered service does not require anyone to use it; excluding contraceptive coverage for those who choose to plan and space their families with modern methods of birth control will effectively translate into coercive childbearing for many. We support social justice. We recognize the dignity and worth of each and every member of our communities—including those uniquely vulnerable to…
Read More…mass is not a political rally. It is actually a religious, very important service, where people come together to receive the body and blood of Christ. The idea that you’re using it as a rally for bishops is implausible to a lot of Catholics.” “We need to burst their [politicians’] bubble,” said the Rev. Carlton Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and a Baptist minister. “It’s a perception that the bishops c…
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…ake that back. In the middle of the California desert, I attended a church service in which the pastor preached on the evils of “liberation theology.” Which he said is about Obama wanting to take from the people who have and give to the people who don’t. Which is socialism. Which is a religion. Which is like Satanism. He also said that Americans are the most spoiled people on earth. I’m pretty sure the pastor must have not noticed he was speaking…
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