Religion Dispatches
…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…
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…tal volunteers—who would come in to teach job skills and do Bible study—outnumbered Catholic volunteers by about 15 to 1. Also in the city I was in the vast majority of inmates were from the poorer parts, where there are more Pentecostals. But the main reason for the dominance of Pentecostalism was because they believe in the potential for God to radically change a person’s life. The once-I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found narrative in Pentecostalism re…
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…mpaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am con…
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…“questioning the assumption of Israel being connected to Jewish identity.” Last year’s Pew Research Center’s Portrait of Jewish Americans, a major survey of American Jews, found declining attachment to Israel among younger generations, while older Jews are more likely to see “caring about Israel” as an “essential part” of being Jewish. More than half of respondents over 65 said caring about Israel was “essential,” compared to just 32 percent of th…
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…tian radical A. J. Muste calling Moses the organizer of “Brickmakers Union Number 1” and a pacifist Russian rabbi named Tamaret—wove them all into a new Telling of the tale of freedom. In that Telling, the then ongoing, even now unfinished, struggle of Black America for freedom was interwoven with the ancient story of the Israelites’ struggle to end their slavery under Pharaoh. Where the old Haggadah had what seemed to me a silly argument about ho…
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…w dozen yards of the riders and take pictures of the scene with their cell phone cameras. Traffic on College Avenue begins to pick up. “You’re protesting God!” a motorist hollers when he catches sight of one of the Soulforce banners. Finally a slender young man wearing a “CBC Soccer” jacket ventures all the way to the sidewalk. “I just kind of want to show them I care,” says Jonathan Jacobs, a junior at the college. Jacobs, whose family moved to C…
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…oach; in losing him, we lost not just one of the great American men of the last century—one of our greatest teachers—but someone who transcended our differences and cared for everyone. There are many dichotomies we are fond of dividing America into: black and white, rich and poor, native and immigrant, gay and straight, urban and rural, and however else you draw your lines. Coach Wooden transcended many of those simple dichotomies, offering wisdom…
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…ld, Matt Morris steeped in the liturgy of his mother’s Episcopal church in Denver. As a teenager, he performed on the All New Mickey Mouse Club with its familiar roster of future celebrities: Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake among them. After high school, he moved to Nashville and briefly attended the Southern Baptists’ Belmont University before launching a successful songwriting career, crafting major league hits. He tried some of his schoolm…
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…ens with prosperity preacher Kirbyjon Caldwell recalling his prayer on the phone with Obama before the first presidential debate in Denver (are they trying to advertise the ineffectiveness of prayer?): “I would pray that your primary will and words that you want the president to say will fall from his lips.” Gilgoff futher recounts: “Obama, for his part, was mostly silent.” Could it be because he thinks Caldwell’s from-God’s-will-to-my-lips busine…
Read More…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…
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