Religion Dispatches
…f fame or even 15 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List than by 15 years of arduous preparation in order to heal the sick? That leads us to the subject of people in Haiti who also get cancer, and how many doctors and nurses they have at their disposal, but let’s not go there. And we probably won’t. Instead, let us turn our thoughts to the poor hack writer who views another man’s sickness and suffering mainly as an opportunity to earn a few b…
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…al good. When further pain and suffering is avoided, when additional lives are spared devastating social stigmas, when men stop controlling women, justice accrues. When women are able to make choices that are best for themselves and their families, abortion and raising children are among the many ways women choose life. Theological mistakes are costly. The Brazilian bishops’ words ring hollow. They’ve perpetuated the ideology that abortion is wors…
Read More…e an hour. These little things help with the arduously long month of this particular regimen and ritual. This made me think about the secrets of a successful suhur (s.o.s. for short). I’m a suhur diehard. In addition, at my age and level of health, I cannot survive without suhur. In my younger days, if I missed it I would struggle through the day without it. It was noticeably more difficult, but I could make it. One missed day was about all I woul…
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…n birth control, abortion, and other “life” issues]. The Catholic elements are hard to miss, as is the intertwining of the Pope with satanic rape/conception/motherhood as destiny. I enjoy how the satanists are the ones who lock Rosemary down. As you write, she becomes “surrounded” and “hemmed in” by her neighbors, doctors, and spouse who are all only concerned with “the monstrous life growing inside of her.” This seems to be what the conservatives…
Read More…oung enough that I could actually read from a pocket-size edition which I carried around with me all the time. Every lull in the day—and in fact even without a lull—I would take it out and read. The Qur’ans of today have an indicator mark at the beginning of each thirtieth part, called a juz’. So I set it upon myself to reach the next marker each day, to help me keep pace of how much I was reading. Reaching the daily goal soon also became reading…
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…nd contempt. Those circles become petri dishes for hatred, and if the boundaries are drawn sharply enough and the pressure to conform high enough, they inevitably produce someone who takes their inner brokenness out on whichever target they find convenient. Perhaps those individuals were radicalized, or perhaps they just sat in the everyday stew for too long. The result is the same, as is the communal share in the blame. Because these world views…
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…still identify with the 20th century civil rights movement) and the New Guard of fearless youth, many of whom are not shy about showing contempt for the pastors. This is not just a story about intergenerational conflict; it’s about different visions of what a healthy African American response to white supremacy looks like in the 21st century. 3. Christianity’s obvious capacity to generate paranoia and hate. This tends to get a pass in mainstream…
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…alth bills, including the Hill-Burton Act, came up for reauthorization in March, Church warned Congress that it needed to act “or we are going to leave this to many different courts to decide.” He proposed an amendment that would prohibit the federal government from tying any public health funding to the requirement than an individual or hospital perform an abortion or sterilization contrary to their religious beliefs. “[I]t should be evident that…
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…31, “The ruthless money-makers are financing our charitable agencies which are caring for the victims of the pitiless economic struggle. . . charity does not make for economic justice.” Meanwhile, whites moved from arguing that “the first taste of charity is as dangerous as the first shot of ‘dope’,” as the head of a Methodist aid agency put it in 1927, to a concern with systemic problems. The head of the chronically underfunded Memphis Community…
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…of conservative evangelicalism, there was a feeling that there had been a war declared upon their tradition. And Clinton would be more of the same. *Fact Check: Lawsuits were not, in fact, filed by the government against the Green family or against the Little Sisters of the Poor (to whom Mansfield presumably refers). In fact, both entities, backed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, filed suit against the federal government. In addition, whi…
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