Religion Dispatches
…epresented group of Muslims however is still African Americans. You would think that white Americans who converted to Islam and raised families as Muslim would be the most under represented. But there has been a long standing fascination by “Brown” Muslims with white America so white Americas who become Muslim are often cast as spokespersons. I don’t know maybe this is just to “show” that Americans are Muslims too (and here you should read, tongue…
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…or Henry Luce, there was of course the actual Catholic with whom he shared his home, his second wife Clare Boothe Luce, but there was also an unabashed affinity for the Olympian authority the Vatican represented—similar to the kind he imagined his publications would offer each week. As one of his early biographers noted, Luce “respected anybody who took a traditional religion seriously, whether Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Jew, and de…
Read More…you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course no one denies that Francis is a change for the better. As Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, told The Guardian, Francis isn’t so much “a breath of…
Read More…mail-ordered consecrated hosts from a priest in Turkey to be desecrated in his ritual. This boast inspired Archbishop Paul Coakley to file a lawsuit against Daniels. A judge issued an order forbidding Daniels from harming the wafers. The wafers were eventually surrendered and the suit dropped. This arrangement stopped further discussion of whether the Catholic Church actually holds a legal claim to how its wafers are used. Oklahoma governor Mary F…
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…ut, relative to, let’s say, the Little Sisters of the Poor, 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 religiou…
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…out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. They are both masters at weaving nonfiction into a page-turner. Anything half as good would be fine with me. What’s your next book? I’m not sure yet. Hopefully something surprising that will make a good read….
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…seen the Catholic Church operate in the role of aggressor or opportunist. This history begins roughly in 1054, the formal break in communion between the Latin Western Christian Church, headed by the Roman papacy, and the four historical patriarchates of the Eastern Church. The split was preceded by a series of disputes concerning both church governance and theology, chief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority. A number…
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…t with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price gets bigger. It gets harder. Get behind Him. He will be our shield because these people are not enemies of ours. They are enemies of Him. They are enemies of man’s freedom.” “Commanding us as a pe…
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…e these people from the community so they do not assault again.” “When it comes to abuse, there’s an overriding state interest in protecting children and I think that has to trump religious concerns.”…
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…September 13 by the police after an enraged mob stormed his house, beating him and threatening his mother, a Coptic Christian. Saber was rumored to be circulating the Innocence of Muslims film trailer on his Facebook page. In a video blog, he spoke of the importance of exercising critical reasoning about religious matters. While in custody, Saber was slashed in the throat by razor-wielding prisoners after a guard told them of his “crime” and he w…
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