Religion Dispatches
…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…
Read More
…udied, and at least 12 were formally approved as of 2008—according to most numbers (although even a simple count of “official” sites is hard to obtain), Our Lady of Good Help is the 13th. Pope Benedict XVI recently called for more moderation in approving such sites, but any new regulations did not fall into place in time to stop Bishop Ricken from pushing Adele Brise into the international spotlight. Benedict probably doesn’t have to worry about A…
Read More…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…
Read More
…res of the fix that doesn’t fix are acknowledgment that one is wronged and right to fight back. This is usually accurate; people know when they’re getting screwed. Yet when the causes are intricate and overwhelming, “quick-fixes” seek targets that soothe in their simplicity: targets that are identifiable, isolatable, and already a bit alien or illicit. They are easily seen as dangerous, so when we hear that they are the cause of present dangers, i…
Read More
…sion”) effort has rung alarm bells among observers, stoking fears that the right-of-center government of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (a self-described Hindu nationalist), are seeking to undermine post-independence India’s secular ideals. It has drawn so much attention, in fact, that it prompted President Obama to issue a not-so-subtle rebuke to Modi’s government for not doing more to protect religious minorities. Am…
Read More
…be live-streamed, starting Wednesday, June 15). The bishops will take up a number of issues, from the revised liturgy to assisted suicide, but their conversations are sure to be dominated by an issue that has been dogging them since the mid-1980s: sexually abusive priests and the bishops who enabled them. Ten years after Cardinal Bernard Law became the poster bishop for failed religious leadership, new revelations of episcopal misfeasance threaten…
Read More
…administration and the mandate. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And starting around 2012, white Catholics broke for the GOP by historic margins. It’s also worth noting, as Michael Sean Winters has, that this occurred around the time the administrative staff of the bishops’ confer…
Read More
…Chabad is a messianic Hasidic sect; Aish, as I’ve chronicled before, is a right-wing organization designed to draw non-Orthodox Jews into the Orthodox world. Aside from glossy websites and good search engine optimization, nothing makes them more authoritative than other, more mainstream Jewish sources. But when you look up, say, “Are Jews okay with homosexuality?” Chabad gets to speak second, within the Google algorithm, right after Wikipedia. As…
Read More…would reverse a May Supreme Court ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to marry and would instead codify domestic partnership rights. The Progressive Labor Party, which the New York Times describes as “backed by many traditionally conservative church organizations,” took power in July “and began to mobilize legislative support for a reversal of the ruling.” Preserve Marriage, an anti-marriage equality group, had opposed giving same-sex c…
Read More…ndly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there really are… Rep. Peter King (R-NY), minus 45 years f…
Read More