Religion Dispatches
…day. Before the shaykh arrives, I continue with my Qur’an reading. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most of the Qur’an that I have memorized myself, and this is more a review than a simple reflective read. Coming to the end of the Qur’an reading is also melancholy, and I forget why I felt I should rush just a few days ago. How will I put my friend down, except for the many occasions I use it in my work, after…
Read More…nd care for each other, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, for better or worse, for as long as you both shall live?” Some of us are lucky enough to have found the partner who loves us enough to say, “I will.” If the cries of “liberal judge” become too loud, then use your second piece of information and simply show them this video. It’s an Australian ad in support of marriage equality. If they aren’t tearing up by the end, then do as my…
Read More
…urt cases we discuss come next with great emphasis placed on the religious freedom clause and their civil rights. I demand that they know their rights and stand up for those rights if another person is being harassed––not because they agree with the person being harassed (I tell them they can absolutely disagree) but because the rights belong to all of us. If we allow anyone to chip away at those rights we will see the foundation of our nation wea…
Read More
…graphic outliers in their use of “morality” to uphold and defend their far-right politics. Young white evangelical men who are active in their religious communities have perpetrated more than one act of terrorism in America’s recent past, and if we want to learn better how we might prevent such crimes, we must not be afraid of examining these connections. *Last name changed to protect against possible professional retaliation….
Read More
…Waldman, however. Though blowing the shofar (a curved piece of ram’s horn used like a trumpet) is usually reserved for the Jewish High Holy Days, Waldman now blows his at every opportunity. He has done so for Unification events across Asia and Europe, occasionally referring to his patron as “Rabbi Moon.” What’s in it for him? As he explained it at the time, he had been single when he first crossed paths with the Unification Church. But then, he s…
Read More
…over the years, I continued to work out strategies for filling those gaps between written texts and lived experience. Once I discovered the synergy between my experiences as a child and the women in the study and how important talking to the dead was to us all, I realized that I had a niche for framing the disconnect that had disturbed me many years ago. In the end, what began from a dissatisfaction I experienced as a Geechee girl who wanted to s…
Read More
…build the center. The Evening of Hope event itself bounced back and forth between efforts to promote access to abortion alternatives in the form of charitable services and political campaigning aimed at legally prohibiting abortion—a position the Republican Party’s platform. Palin and others invoked the notion of building and affirming a “culture of life,” to give the event an apolitical patina. Crisis pregnancy centers have been controversial in…
Read More…way to protest what the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, is planning is to read the Qur’an. This seems an appropriate way to not interfere with the free speech of others, and yet use our own freedom to express our dismay at those who use their freedom to express intolerance and to attempt to provoke others to violence and conflict. For those who wish to read the Qur’an online, here is a link. McGrath ends with a quote by Heinric…
Read More…anned hearings are being decried by religious leaders and scholars as an abuse of government power, a blow to religious freedom, and a government-backed demonization of millions of decent people of faith. As a Mormon, I find the King hearings particularly objectionable. Because Mormons of all people know what it feels like for an entire religion to be publicly demeaned for the objectionable deeds of its fringe minorities. And because our religion…
Read More…potential partners, the Indonesians are treated as a country worthy of America’s respect. Cairo was aspiration, and Jakarta was the real. There are huge differences in political processes in play. Indonesia is a democracy with strong civic institutions and a thriving civil society. The Arab world is dominated by autocracies, while Afghanistan and Pakistan have governments that are in various degrees of uselessness. There is a political angle to O…
Read More