Religion Dispatches
…church’s post-Katrina resurgence wasn’t just a community, but more like a United Nations, or rather United Neighborhoods. And like many civic-minded organizations in New Orleans, they took citizen participation and equity as their bottom-line terms and conditions. Former Mayor Ray Nagin learned as much when in 2006 he opened a landfill to store Katrina debris less than two miles from Village L’est, which is shared by Vietnamese- and African-Ameri…
Read More…e of people in the name of science were going on in post-WWII Germany, the United States Public Health Service was intentionally exposing Guatemalans to the bacterium that causes syphilis, so that different therapies for the disease could then be tested on them. First, infected prostitutes were identified and made freely accessible to ‘volunteer’ prisoners for sex. When this didn’t work so well, attempts were made to infect patients in an asylum f…
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…tions on the Shia side of the movement. The fledgling Islamic banks in the United States have come under increasing official scrutiny since 9/11. But aside from the cadre of vigilantes whose sense of purpose depends on seeing a never-ending “Islamofacist” threat, observers agree that there’s no credible link between these banks and Al Qaeda-type bad guys. Read the founding theorists of Islamic economics, in fact, and you’ll find a decidedly pacifi…
Read More….”) The reason is clear: in his twisted mind, Islam and terrorism are inseparable. This inability to separate the religious from the political is no real surprise. Modern American conservatism, at least since the rise of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” in the late 1970s, has had this fusion of the sacred and secular at its base, and this is the consequence. Once you accept the historically flawed idea that “American” equals “Christian,” you of ne…
Read More…question about whether or not we believe in God. Throughout my life in the United States, the first question I’m asked about religion is: “Do you believe in God?” I use the word god in the singular, as this is the default manner in which I’m asked the question. My answer often confuses people: “You are skipping an important question before asking this. I do not care if there are gods or not.” Whether unconsciously or not, we use the term “religion…
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…for “illegal” immigrants to be housed while re-starting their lives in the United States. The federal government (which had at first left the movement alone) began to infiltrate churches, taping meetings and arresting participants. In several cases the government was able to prosecute and imprison members of the Sanctuary movement, though they continued to have success helping immigrants well into the 1990s. In 2006, Cardinal Roger Mahony of the A…
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…ations, magicians have “clients” who pay for private consultations. In the United States, such individuals are typically called “psychics.” In Romania they are called vrajitoares, or witches. They are almost exclusively female and many of them are of Roma or “gypsy” heritage. In 2006, it was estimated that there are some 4,000 witches in Romania. Travel guides advise tourists that witchcraft is a normal part of Romanian culture and that in rural a…
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…rs. “What I found out was that NGOs, the UN, and UNICEF were coming in and promoting an agenda that the church of Uganda did not want to be in this nation.” Engle was careful never to explicitly call for the passage of the bill itself, and to avoid being accused of inciting violence. “We are not standing with violence or hatred to people with homosexual lifestyles,” he preached. Still, as he does in the United States, he insisted that homosexualit…
Read More…riage equality, gay relatives and friends, explained Andy Grow, Washington United for Marriage press secretary. “In California, they talked a lot about rights, and they didn’t talk enough about what this means for couples, for people who love each other,” he said. “Faith communities are not monolithic, and we have a huge swatch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the L…
Read More…rgy (i.e., Christians, Jews and Muslims): In a terse statement Friday, the United Methodist University Senate announced that it had rescinded a public warning and restored funding to the school, which will remain affiliated with the church. The senate oversees all Methodist-affiliated seminaries. Claremont President Jerry Campbell said the change of heart came after the school managed to allay fears “that we were turning a United Methodist-related…
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