Religion Dispatches
…concern for the overwhelming majority of Muslims. When I mentioned traveling the Muslim world, include in those itineraries American and European Muslims. It’s pretty much a non-practice. Until someone comes along and produces the Big Love of the Middle East; there are, after all, substantive differences. The four wives cannot be related. There cannot be more than four wives. And they must all be maintained at the same standard. So when it comes…
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…en it comes to the difficulty of achieving a two-state solution and Middle East peace, even if many partisans on both sides are hardly pious. But what about Christians? This is where it was most troubling to see religion not addressed in the debate. So, via an admittedly unscientific poll, I asked Twitter whether the Democratic candidates should have brought up the connection between evangelicals and Israel last night, and received a variety of an…
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…e with the idea of a society dominated by white Christians. The comparison between Tarrant and the Norwegian terrorist Andres Breivik is relevant for a number of reasons. Like Breivik, Tarrant was part of a wider subculture of hatred. He likely thought of himself not as a terrorist but as a soldier in a great and hidden war, carrying out a mission on behalf of an imagined constituency of supporters. Like Breivik, he dressed up in military garb wit…
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…mmunion. He did so because he had come to feel a responsibility to those “least among us” who were not moving on a path toward acceptance in as straight a line as many in the late ’60s and early ’70s had hoped. But you also hear more than a subtle echo of what Matthew learned from Merton’s heterosexual torment. It remains true that given our national climate, it will take a while to let love loose. And then to let love grow, deeper, greater, wider…
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…violent and divisive political past. Even gridlock between extreme elements that nonetheless agree to participate in a democratic electoral system is an advance over the savage civil war between a secular dictator and religious terrorists. In this sense even a tumultuous Tahrir Square is much better than the heartbreak of Ground Zero….
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…rried priests serving under the jurisdiction of Rome. Byzantine Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians who have entered into communion with Rome, maintain the Eastern Orthodox practice around clerical celibacy, allowing married men to be ordained to the diaconate and priesthood, though not the episcopacy (i.e. bishop). The Catholic Church also allows married clergymen who convert to Catholicism to, on a case-by-case basis, be ordained into the Cat…
Read More…cleric. While homosexuality is prohibited nearly everywhere in the Middle East, homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq. ABC News reported that “The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes as many as 30 people have been killed during the last three months because they were — or were perceived to be — gay.” A Human Right Watch Iraq country report 2009, pointed out that “Lesbian, gay…
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…ed such a scenario. Fraenkel believes philosophy can save the world—or at least make us more respectful of one another. A professor at McGill University and the author of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, Fraenkel traveled the world to spread his gospel. His mission took him to East Jerusalem, where he co-taught a seminar on philosophical religions with the eminent Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibe…
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…s Muslim Plurality For the first time ever (or perhaps just since sometime between 1000 and 1600 CE when The Plague decimated the European Christian population, according to footnote #2 of the report), in 2070 there will be more Muslims in the world than Christians. Between 2010 and 2050 the Muslim population is projected to grow by 73%, far outpacing the total population growth rate of 35%. Islam is not likely to keep up that growth rate forever…
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…pport community for Mormon MOMs, or “mixed-orientation marriages,” usually between gay men and straight women. Although some couples claim their marriages are successful, too many resemble the marriage of gay Mormon blogger Beck, who details his desire for “bromances,” freely admits to his sexual rejection of his wife for close to three decades, and even ends the story his twenty-ninth wedding anniversary to a woman he insists he loves by acknowle…
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