Religion Dispatches
…y the group Ordain Women as a gentle and symbolic demonstration against pervasive gender segregation in LDS Church administration and leadership. All observant men and boys over the age of 12 are eligible for ordination to the Mormon lay priesthood, and the Church’s theological, liturgical, financial, and administrative decisions are made by an exclusively-male chain of command. “I have heard from many women, ‘I see nothing wrong with the status q…
Read More…y failed to foresee the predictable parlaying of the incident into a conservative cause celebre. As Rachel Held Evans tweeted, “I support LGBT equality but the subpoena thing in Houston seems intrusive & counterproductive. Violates liberty + feeds persecution complex.” Rob Boston, Director of Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement, “Government authorities have the right to subpoena pastors and e…
Read More
…Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton in September, received 10 Public Health Act tickets for organizing various anti-public health rallies in northern Alberta last year and revived her Twitter account, dormant since 2016, specifically in order to promote anti-public health events she organized and ran. But the story of Jericho is nothing to worry about. It’s only about divine massacre. Walls come crumbling down They know what they’re doing. One particip…
Read More
…d to enter a world that exists beyond the status-quo, a world at once captivating and sinister. Poetry dismantles the strictures of conventions. The name of the band—at once grateful and dead— is such a combination of words. A metaphor brings new insights when two seemingly paradoxical categories are brought together, e.g. rock ‘n’ roll band and environment (ushered in above). At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the win…
Read More
…criminatory hiring policies made many of the promised construction jobs unavailable to non-white residents. Upon its completion in 1965, it would be dedicated “to the American people.” More than five decades after its erection, the city the 630-foot arch overlooks hasn’t seen much change in how it treats its residents of color. https://twitter.com/TefPoe/status/908700582491377666 According to the Mapping Police Violence project, the St. Louis Metr…
Read More…even marginalized among the “ex-gay” industry. By omitting this deeply relevant fact, the NPR story glosses over the true story here: those who become “ex-gay” are usually those who are making a living off of their new status as “cured” homosexuals. They are professional “ex-gays” who have their entire livelihoods bound up in maintaining their “ex-gay” status. One slip can be deadly to a career, as John Paulk discovered years ago after being caugh…
Read More
…ny, peace and tranquility. Unfortunately none of that was available on arrival. Coralling and cajoling students, even grownup ones, requires energy and the last bits of mine were drained before I “lost” the group at the Mumbai airport. After the nearly day-long flight, we still had a four-hour bus ride ahead of us. When we finally found each other, boarded the bus and found boxed breakfasts of chicken salad sandwiches, I relaxed a bit. That was pr…
Read More
…suits, not beige suits.) Mormons never intone, “Christ be praised,” like evangelicals. More importantly, missionaries don’t emphasize the Book of Mormon nearly as much as Joseph Smith’s “First Vision,” the restoration of the true church of Christ, and especially the “plan of salvation” and its promise that “families are forever.” The missionary program certainly no longer encourages Latter-day Saints to gather in Salt Lake City. I could go on. Ca…
Read More
…tion, confirmed in Pakistan and suspected in Iran, the search has been derivative. There are other senses in which the Muslim world, by and large, has not ‘excelled,’ and for that perhaps we should be grateful, not caustic. For you cannot claim the planet and eat it too. Nothing the Muslim world has accomplished can possibly compare to the harm done by Western technologies and modes of consumption. While China may recently have become the world’s…
Read More…e it, gay sex is completely titillating to heterosexuals, especially conservative Christian heterosexuals. They can’t stop thinking about us in bed! Remind me again, who’s the perv here? If the number of partners one has, the amount of time one spends in clubs, and what kind of sexual abuse one has suffered in their lifetime makes a person gay, then I suppose I ought to turn in my lesbian card. I can count the number of sexual partners I have had…
Read More