Religion Dispatches
…d be allowed to decide that an innocent life is worthless. ADF and FRC are looking forward to defending Ireland’s abortion ban so that scores of pre-born children are guaranteed the protection the Irish people gave them,” said ADF Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull. “This case is not only pivotal to Europe; it’s pivotal to America. With greater frequency, the U.S. Supreme Court looks across the ocean to see what other countries are doing when considering…
Read More
…for this scene in the film read simply: A COWBOY passes the alley. Pauses, looks at ENNIS. ENNIS glares at him. ENNIS (growls) What the fuck you lookin’ at? The COWBOY moves on. McMurtry typed these words about the story: “I was the more stunned when I read ‘Brokeback Mountain’ because I realized that it was a story that had been sitting there all my life, fifty-five years of which have been lived in the American West. There the story was, all tho…
Read More
…tand the appeal of these neo-atheist books. They’ve been at the top of the best-seller lists (in the category of religion no less!) because they have tapped into a backlash. However, they make the mistake of rejecting all religion because of bad religion. From a political point of view, they also ignore the fact that nearly 9 in 10 Americans are religious, and the vast majority say religion is very important in their lives. Progressive religious v…
Read More…the possibility that the United States as a nation has not lived up to the best of its democratic ideals, has not represented in its internal practices and foreign policies the commitment to freedom that fuels its rhetoric. And, while we’re at it, we might throw into the mix some attention to our materialism and its awkward and distorting presentation. There is something useful in examining the policies and practices of our nation and demanding th…
Read More
…r their rights (to very little fanfare and often to dismissal or apathy at best), this provision bothers me deeply. In any case, RFMA is very much not the Equality Act, a bill that would provide sweeping non-discrimination protections for queer Americans that has languished in Congress for years. It’s a defensive piece of legislation, a protection of the status quo rather than a step forward. If America were truly a functional democracy, we could…
Read More…the fatness levels? How about people who attend religious services a lot?” Look: My own tradition, Christianity, has not always had the healthiest attitudes about the appetites. Appetites have too often tended to symbolize loss of control, selfishness, and compulsive behavior, for which the only antidote was too often thought to be shame and projection. You see this with sex: If we don’t vilify anyone who deviates from the ideal of celibacy or het…
Read More
…tment droppedprecipitously at the beginning of the intifada and increasing numbers of young Israeli professionals have already begun leaving for the calmer pastures of Europe or Silicon Valley. In many ways, Avishai’s vision is something like Thomas Friedman’s in his work The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The biggest difference is that, where Friedman sees the changing marketplace as a global dynamic that needs to be shaped to bring balance between mo…
Read More
…es of tensions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. At one point, he looked likely to scale the hierarchy of the Nigerian Church until he criticized the decision by Nigerian bishops to boycott the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the decennial gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world. Idowu-Fearon has continued to urge senior Nigerian bishops to remain in conversation with Anglican leaders from around the world, and been excluded from the…
Read More…model, is severely restrained in its authority over economic activity. The best check on the depravity of individuals who make up the civil government is the decentralization of authority into the distinct spheres; the best check on the depravity of human beings in the economy is the decentralization of the market created by competition. Historian Michael McVicar has this called this “theocratic libertarianism”: it creates an economic zone free of…
Read More
…God has put all parts of our body together in the way that God decided is best. —I Corinthians 12: 4—6, 17—18 (CEV) Third Way’s* recently released “Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda” has sparked lively discussions about the policies it puts forward, but it has also cast in bold relief some tensions and factions in the growing chorus of voices that are politically progressive and religious. The two-year initiative set out to find common…
Read More