Religion Dispatches
…thedral United Church of Christ American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA) Beulah Church of the Nazarene Bethel Tabernacle AME Church, Brooklyn Pax Christi USA Tikkun-Network of Spiritual Progressives Jewish Funds for Justice Disciples Justice Action Network Sojourners Scary people, all of them. Scary!…
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…ism must be evil is ignored; as is that fact that Halloween incorporates a number of elements and influences that have accrued during its journey through various cultures. In truth, some of these elements are Christian, like the feast of the dead that attempted to maintain communion with the saints, both living and deceased. The Roman Catholic Church continues to include this element in its festivities, and thus, as historian Ronald Hutton argues…
Read More…was African-Americans. Ours is the story still not well known, despite our numbers. For one thing, after September 11th we were given a small reprieve. American prejudice and intolerance floated from us as African Americans, who happen to be Muslim, and focused on Muslims who happen to be Americans. Therefore the hatred built up against foreign Muslims immigrant and their offspring. More than a few African-American Muslims were content to sit back…
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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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…mage forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cover images of prelates and popes. Life’s cover images of lived-religion would continue with the then-famous Dionne sisters (the first known quintu…
Read More…mbers of The Satanic Temple, led by spokesperson Lucien Greaves, have been working like fiends with campaigns from Tallahassee to Detroit to Cambridge. Several other Satanic groups have also shown increased activity—apparently jealous of Greaves and the media attention he’s received. For most, the year of Satanism has been either a sign of the apocalypse or a source of hilarious news items. But Greaves says their goal is to change the “socio-polit…
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…et hurt,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. “We will be working with Catholics around the country to stand up and ensure that policies don’t hurt people who are less well off.” The leverage that progressives do have, noted O’Brien, is that Trump has to deliver to middle America. “We know where those folks go for their birth control. Defunding Planned Parenthood, cutting off contraceptive access, implementing a religious conserva…
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…hief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority. A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies in traditio…
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…g that it wasn’t a good idea to leave Church governance to an old boys’ network. They have been focused on forgiving each other and covering up crimes “to avoid scandal”—that is, to protect each other, their power, and the church’s wealth. “Call No Man Father” Here’s the good news: women’s long fight to win the right to an equal role in the Roman Catholic Church is being shortened by the mistakes of this male hierarchy. In fact, the once-omnipoten…
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…; it’s part of the history of Christianity in America. But there’s more at work here. In Beck’s and Barton’s hands, the attack on collective salvation becomes a cultural weapon against adherents to the social gospel as well as a political weapon against the constitutional principle of church-state separation, the bedrock of individual religious liberty. I’m not going to evaluate Beck’s interpretation of liberation theology here. (For a thoughtful…
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