Religion Dispatches
…in a cycle of violence. Those who called for protests, like those who make mocking movies, know well what they do, and what the consequences could be. In an age when the opinion of Muslims has begun to matter, and ideas can rocket around the planet within seconds, we must be very careful how we approach “the other.” For there are powerful grievances, and there are those who would turn to violence to achieve and maintain their power (or deprive oth…
Read More…ily models which consider that the natural woman-man union would be only a model among others,” reports Basilica.ro, the Romanian Patriarchy’s news service. According to him, the family is in a fragile and difficult situation, as some think that the traditional family model is outdated. “The number of those who treat marriage as a simple contract or partnership between two persons of different gender or the same gender keeps increasing nowadays. H…
Read More…this reading of the religious liberty rights of private employers.” What’s more, the letter goes on, when spending taxpayer money, the government may require contractors to adhere to anti-discrimination laws without infringing on their religious freedom rights: Religious contractors do not have a right to government contracts, and there is no burden on their religious exercise if they are unable or unwilling to comply with those requirements. When…
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…tertwined with the story of Thomas Merton (1915-1968), arguably the most famous monk that the Abbey of Gethsemani, and American Catholicism, ever produced. Father Matthew was neither famous nor self-promoting, which is what makes the lyrical strains of the notes he did produce so very eloquent and so very worth our hearing. Both men seem to me now the product of a different age and a different time, and more to the point, both men were the result…
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…to an imagined picture of “the Jew.” Pogroms are a part of our ancestral memory, memorialized in everything from folklore to liturgies, and are archetypal for how we understand antisemitism’s expression. When Hamas strays through a Jewish village in a rage-filled string of civilian murders, it’s eerily familiar. This logic, however, fails in that it refuses to see antisemitism as a set of beliefs that can be clearly circumscribed. This is a proble…
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…mething? A few days later, a Republican presidential candidate offered the most extreme version of Islamophobic rhetoric we have seen thus far. In Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims—including any would-be immigrants, students, tourists and other visitors—from entering the country as a response to last week’s California shootings. He went on to defend this egregious statement on Good Morning America by comparing his plan as similar to FDR’s internment…
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…rtable seeing belief described in such pragmatic terms? The person who was most moved by this of anyone was a deeply devout priest. I think it’s a tribute to the hunger of people to understand spirituality through our lived human existence. I just wonder if I’ll be standing in synagogue one day and suddenly think, “Hey, this is making me 40% likelier to avoid drug addiction,” or whatever. That seemed like it might be a jarring experience. Well, “i…
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…t became evident to me, and I think to others, that it was a pretty simple move to make. We studied the Bible, we prayed, and we heard testimonies from those who were gay and lesbian in our church and beyond our church about how church had helped or hurt them in their journey. All around that was the fact that if we can do what we had done with folks from Burma then this is not a difficult step for us to make. How would you characterize your conve…
Read More…Back from my Bloggingheads hiatus, I talk with Get Religion’s Mollie Hemingway about whether Mitt Romney’s plan to discuss his Mormonism tonight at the Republican National Convention benefit his candidacy: And we also discussed the significance of the fact that Barack Obama is the only Protestant on both presidential tickets: …
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…d, or even those who celebrate with the Dead, begin a restoration toward a more integrated, more whole sensibility. A special series on religion and culture produced in collaboration with the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California Religious consciousness, whether Navajo sand-painting or Catholic Mass, perceives and embraces the presence of the Dead, and does so in ritual. In the 1960s, the new consciousness from Californ…
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