Religion Dispatches
…dismay turned to laughter when I saw immediately below Winters’ screed the code of conduct for comments on National Catholic Reporter. His post is a primer on violating NCR’s own rules for respectful conversation. Maybe someone at NCR can give him a much-needed tutorial. NCR Comment code: Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Use appropriate language. Avoid vulgarities and slurs. Keep to the point. Deliberat…
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…attacks. “I call on The Gambia to fulfil its international obligations to promote and protect the human rights of all persons without discrimination, to repeal all provisions of the Criminal Code that criminalize relations between consenting adults and to put in place an immediate moratorium on arrests on the basis of such laws,” the High Commissioner said. Amnesty International also sounded the alarm on Gambia this week, highlighting the detenti…
Read More…f Family Watch International, and Scott Lively, who has traveled the globe promoting anti-gay policies. RD Contributor Jay Michaelson has published a Daily Beast commentary on Rick Warren’s work in Africa, which he says “may well reflect the sense among Christian conservatives that America has already been lost, but Africa may yet be saved. Here, the culture war has been won by Satan; there, it may still be won by God.” Churches, schools, and fait…
Read More…l was erected on the Temple grounds… – from a mishna (early rabbinic legal code) tractate about fast days (Ta’anit 4:6) This year the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, a minor fast day in the Jewish calendar, falls in the middle of Ramadan, when Muslims the world over fast during the day to commemorate the month of Mohammad’s prophecy. It also falls at a time when Israel and Hamas are exchanging bombs and rockets aimed at killing the other s…
Read More…only when talking about welfare recipients. Proposed changes to the family code would also have narrowed down and eliminated reasons why a couple should be granted a divorce except for one single expansion: In the case a partner demonstrates “homosexual or lesbian conduct.” The proposed language also drew criticism from left an right for lowering the age at which someone was allowed to marry from 18 years of age to 16 in the case of boys and 14 i…
Read More…ons with tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Those changes were set in motion after record amounts of campaign spending by (c)(4) groups in 2012, and tea party complaints that their applications for (c)(4) status were improperly denied for partisan reasons. Although Congressional Republicans tried to make a scandal of the application process, further congressional investigation showed both conservative and progr…
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…n of religious believers’ feelings has been enshrined in the Russian Civil Code for quite some time, but making it a criminal offense to insult the feelings of religious believers could bring with it much harsher penalties. The Russian web was abuzz with a lively discussion of this topic last fall, and as the initiative was recently passed, there is renewed interest in the Russian media and blogosphere. Аccording to the just passed redaction of ar…
Read More…ssisted the Senate Finance Committee with an investigation of possible tax code violations by televangelists, Trinity has seen less media coverage, and hence fewer donations from the public, according to the letter. Trinity’s investigations for the Senate Finance Committee led the Committee to launch an investigation, in 2007, based on revelations that televangelists had used tax-exempt funds for luxury cars, private jets, mansions, and even plast…
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…in American society that images of Christ are not the real issue, but just code for broader sets of values for particular groups? Paul Harvey: The fact that the white Jesus was in the stained glass window of 16th St. Baptist emerged from a long history in which the image of Jesus represented, in one sense, racial and class structures deeply embedded in American society. That’s why that image, and not some other, was there in the window in the firs…
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…ge your day-to-day relationship with tempting foods. Chocolate cake has to code-switch, from “a thing I want and must resist” to “a thing I don’t want right now,” and that happens in the ACC. As Roundling’s study shows, religious thoughts seem to help with short-term code switching because they offer a concrete set of alternative values. Similarly, when Warren says that caring for his body is a “stewardship issue,” he might be actively molding his…
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