Religion Dispatches
…ration theology-influenced view of salvation is not only unchristian but un-American. Beck has become utterly enamored of religious right pseudo-historian David Barton, who has not only spent a great deal of time on his program, but also joined him on stage at “America’s Divine Destiny,” the event that kicked off the recent Beckapalooza weekend in Washington DC. It was while watching Divine Destiny that I was struck with what seems like a glaring…
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…Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions use different justifications for not reporting,” he says. “But it comes down to the theory that religious issues should be handled within the religious community, even though the powers that be within the community do not have the power to investigate and to prosecute.” For many years, Orth…
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…secularist, atheist, and humanist organizations including the Washington DC-based Center for Inquiry and the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). Full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations and consulted on the report, titled “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Nonreligious,” which was released on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observe…
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…insurance policies that cover contraception. Because Annex has only 16 full-time and two part-time employees, the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” does not require it to provide health insurance to its workers at all. (Only businesses with 50 or more employees are required by the new law to provide insurance.) However, if Annex chooses to offer its employees insurance, its plan—like those of larger companies—must comply with the minimum requir…
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…Jesus differs dramatically from the ultra-conservative, right-wing, I-don’t-see-color deity I spent a good part of my childhood learning about in school. And, no pun intended, but thank God for that. However, if white evangelicals, Christian schools, or white pastors really want to show solidarity, a black square will never—and I mean, never—be enough. Not while they continue to promote leaders, policies, and theories that support white supremacy…
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…ere.” The cognitive dissonance required to listen to an album in which play-by-plays of the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Binding of Isaac are thoroughly detailed and not declare it either pedantic or preachy is a deep dissonance indeed. Sufjan Stevens plays like, seven hundred instruments. He composes for ballets. The dude likes his details. Why couldn’t critics just let Sufjan Stevens bear prophetic witness? Perhaps it’s that the aftertaste o…
Read More…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, 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 n…
Read More…that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notorious bigots like Utah Representative Chris Buttars. But most of the Mormon folks I’m hearing from agree: to see this film is to know what we on the inside saw unfolding all around us during election season 2008. And since then, we’ve seen the costs to our community of claiming to work in “coalition” with others while in fact sh…
Read More…ness as a secular, American immigration narrative that is accessible to non-Jews as well – such as, importantly, readers of this publication. This is good for building bridges with the wider progressive world and with contemporary immigrant communities, and maybe that’s the point. This is a Jewishness everyone can relate to. And it resonates with the anti-religious bent of many on the old Jewish Left as well. It just feels a little shallow. 5000…
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