Religion Dispatches
…there was a backlash from some Muslim women who did not appreciate the “support.” A Facebook group, Muslim Women Against FEMEN, has encouraged Muslim women to post photos of themselves—in whatever they choose to wear—with sentiments such as “Do I look oppressed to you?” or “Nudity DOES NOT liberate me and I DO NOT need saving.” A number of commenters in the group, in fact, seem to think that Femen members are the ones who are oppressed. I myself…
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…t his stamp on a bevy of political organizations that court—and receive—support from a number of world leaders and US political figures. On January 20, as the inaugural festivities wound down, it was left to the Rev. Joseph C. Lowery, a true hero of the civil and human rights movements, to close out the ceremonies with a benediction. And he didn’t disappoint. With his well-worn voice, Lowery brought the poetry, prose and hardscrabble reality of a…
Read More…e larger point: Trump is still the one candidate who coalesces the largest number of evangelicals—even the weekly churchgoers—around him. Those numbers would likely shift should Trump face a two-man race with Ted Cruz. But if survey data still show what they have revealed so far—that Trump will continue to win at least a third of the most frequent church-attending evangelicals—it undermines anti-Trump evangelicals’ main argument about the suspect…
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…the lowest percentage in the country. And the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported earlier this year that the overall growth in number of interracial couples in Mississippi was behind the national average (less than 2.4 percentage points in Mississippi compared to 2.8 percentage points nationally). According to a report released by Pew Research Center in 2017, only 9% of Americans say that interracial marriage is “a bad thing,” while 17% of respond…
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…irst country in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage in 2010. It’s important to underscore this datum of theological history in order to ground the current conversation in reality. Whether the Pope still holds the view that the reason to support civil unions is to keep hetero-marriage ‘safe’ is not known. As we’ve already seen he’s a person who can change his mind. But since his view of ten years ago was a strategic one, the current statemen…
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…ericans were dismayed by Michelle Boorstein’s January 14 Washington Post report on secularization and the secular movement in America. The report failed to quote a single religiously unaffiliated young American or secular advocate. Instead, it gave pride of place to observers like Georgetown University sociologist Jacques Berlinerblau—who claims that American secularism is lacking in innovation, leadership, and movement coherence—and political sci…
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…-Christian values, and we should place a priority on learning about this important historical precedent. The breakdown in classroom discipline over the past 40 years is, in no small measure, due to the elimination of the Ten Commandments as guideposts for student behavior. I will continue to fight against state-sponsored atheism that has caused society to go downhill. One can practically feel the flying spittle. And more importantly, none of this…
Read More…t’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figure sum from the Churc…
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…for example) are rejected by others. They took the Bible seriously as an important historical source without assuming it was historically accurate, and they discussed its ethical materials without presenting them as authoritative for the students. They also acknowledged the existence and importance of competing religious beliefs regarding the Bible and its stories without adopting one perspective as their guiding framework. When they discussed Jud…
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…re was the usual riff that Obamacare was “socialized medicine,” a stunning number of the comments groused about the birth control mandate. There’s significant evidence from earlier Pew Foundation polling that the Catholic bishops’ opposition to the contraceptive mandate and the subsequent war on “religious liberty” they ginned up was a major factor in alienating white Catholics from the Democratic Party. The number of white Catholics who said the…
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