Religion Dispatches
…if lost or stolen, but only if you first write down each and every serial number. Then you have to keep this information somewhere that’s not the same somewhere you keep the checks. But then they really do NOT spend just like cash—especially abroad where we meet and mix with people in their own places. Such places are not subject to our being guests there. So I do tend toward keeping travel cash in an odd place. (No, I’m not gonna share with you…
Read More…ls’s black mass, declaring, “It is shocking and disgusting that a group of New York ‘satanists’ would travel all the way to Oklahoma to peddle their filth here.” Greaves stated that Daniels was not acting responsibly and demanding that Fallin apologize for conflating the two groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their…
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…internet as a result of the inexorable working out of Moore’s Law. As the number of transistors on a chip grew exponentially, computers became smaller, and then they became “personal,” and then they fit in our pockets as a phone. “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing,” at the Computer History Museum In this telling, the internet was not a unique “Columbus” event, but an evolution dependent on the shrinking size and growing capacity of co…
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…ncient principle that where God says before you were formed in the womb I knew you. … So for me, my faith informs my life. I try and spend a little time on my knees every day. But it all for me begins with cherishing the dignity, the worth, the value of every human life. After attacking Kaine for being on a ticket that supports “partial-birth” and publicly funded abortions—and slyly suggesting that he compromised his faith principles to do so—Penc…
Read More…ately he has nothing else to fall back on, no compelling ideology, no good news for anyone who hasn’t been following his worn-out shtick for thirty years. So, good if they’re afraid of the religious left. It means we’re doing our job. And just in case anyone missed the number of religious progressive groups endorsing the rally, here’s a list culled from One Nation site. Their list of endorsers is pretty long, so I apologize if I missed somebody: R…
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…on. A small group of evangelical academics, including the noted scholar of new religions Gordon Melton, are calling for a more informed and sympathetic understanding of the broader Western esoteric tradition in the Sacred Tribes evangelical academic journal. Also, new books are being produced that draw upon scholarly historical and ethnographic approaches to the study of forms of paganism, and critique has been brought to popular evangelical books…
Read More…is week, a film produced and directed by a young African-American (whom I knew when he was a toddler), is opening up in Chicago. It opened last week in New York to grave reviews and a few awards. If you are near by I hope you check it out: “Mooz-lum”, the movie. It is not the story of every African-American Muslim but it is a story about African-American Islam, in one of its many reflections. We are here. We were here before September 11, 2001. Si…
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…e of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For t…
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…ver in Newsweek’s estimation.) The advent of the 1960s, and the magazine’s new status as subsidiary of the Post, led Newsweek to take a different approach. With the 1963 cover story “Catholicism in America” and 1967’s “How Do Catholics View Their Church?” it seemed coverage of the Church in national newsweeklies had moved away from the top-down approach. When Time began to tell similar stories of fracturing faiths and tested authority, it may have…
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…, and analogous things.” Such “analogous things” would most likely include new protections for individuals and institutions that want to be able to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals and couples and create “carve-outs” from recognition of same-sex marriage. “Catholics are acutely aware of the threat posed by a potential alliance between VP-elect Pence and the USCCB in expanding religious exemptions,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, head of the Cath…
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