Religion Dispatches
…e mandate and who fostered outrage over the supposed violation of religious freedom that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s a case where the numbers matter, but many people don’t seem to pay all that much attention to them….
Read More…s Dennis Hastert, also a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi. Over the years, the number of people attending grew, eventually leading to the creation of the CMSA around 2007, when Khan has already left Hill service and was working in the Bush administration. Like other Congressional staffer organizations, the CMSA does not receive any funding or support from the government; rather the status permits it to use space and provides a structure for leadership…
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…aunchly condemns homosexuality—still has language that explicitly decries any unkind treatment of those who identify as gay. A number of other denominations whose official stances reject homosexuality still contain a significant proportion of members who believe it should be accepted by society. “The painful reality of our time is that, to whatever extent we are not vocally affirming that LGBT people are beloved nor explicitly countering claims th…
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…instead of building those bridges for the Kingdom. Reconciliation is a funny thing that takes shape in a number of forms within opposing communities. But one thing I know is true: it does not start or end with victory in mind. Reconciliation is best lived when Kingdom, on Earth as it is in Heaven, is the main goal of faithful establishment. I would remind Mr. Perkins to remember a few of Jesus’ direct words. First, in Matthew 22:18-22, Jesus reit…
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…a sinking ship and God has given him a lifeboat and told him to save as many as he could. That’s the idea, that there’s not anything you can do but save those who are sinking. At the same time, Moody turned around and established what were later known at the Moody Church and the Moody Bible Institute, which were extremely active in reform movements during the progressive era. They were focused on issues of crime in Chicago, sanitation, temperance…
Read More…ient judgment, coming to claim mankind’s ceded land. We’re sitting in a sunny Main Street cafe in Front Royal, Virginia—a beautifying ex-industrial town in the Shenandoah Valley that, as the far edge of DC’s suburban sprawl, is lately home to a surprising number of conservative Christian ministries. Mosher, president of the Catholic anti-contraception lobbyist group Population Research Institute (PRI), describes his grim vision of Europe’s future:…
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…d respect our constitution and that freedom. We trust that legislation in any state would address training of weapon use in a public environment, be it a church, amusement park, or shopping mall. ++++++++++ Crossing Paths: Rev. Joseph Lowery and Rev. Sun Myung Moon While many people no doubt believe that the operations of Rev. Sun Myung Moon are so last century, there is every indication to believe that Moon’s political influence will last well in…
Read More…e larger point: Trump is still the one candidate who coalesces the largest number of evangelicals—even the weekly churchgoers—around him. Those numbers would likely shift should Trump face a two-man race with Ted Cruz. But if survey data still show what they have revealed so far—that Trump will continue to win at least a third of the most frequent church-attending evangelicals—it undermines anti-Trump evangelicals’ main argument about the suspect…
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…television. When I was a child, Hadji from reruns of the animated show Johnny Quest, was the only Muslim I could identify on television, with the added bonus that he was also a fellow East Indian. However, I was puzzled as to how a child could have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and earned the title of “Hajji,” and as someone who spoke Urdu/Hindi and Punjabi, I had no idea what his magic words “sim sim salabim” meant. There was an Arab character (Cp…
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…sippi Clarion Ledger reported earlier this year that the overall growth in number of interracial couples in Mississippi was behind the national average (less than 2.4 percentage points in Mississippi compared to 2.8 percentage points nationally). According to a report released by Pew Research Center in 2017, only 9% of Americans say that interracial marriage is “a bad thing,” while 17% of respondents to a 2018 YouGov poll said that interracial mar…
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