Religion Dispatches
…The values of Africans and the Christian Right are different, but we share words, the words are similar. That’s where the right wins. When we talk about values and family, that appeals to an African. When we talk about evangelicals, it appeals to an African, but what they mean is totally different. So the progressives must start defining those on the right for Africa to understand. The funding that goes to Africa is much more personal. For evangel…
Read More…ns of a country where gay marriage is recognized, which is not the case in Russia…. Russia argued the previous rules were not discriminatory and said the changes violate the sovereignty of states under the pretext of respecting human rights. But Russia’s appeal was roundly rejected by 80 votes to 43, with 37 abstentions. China, Belarus and Muslim countries like Malaysia supported Moscow. Indonesia abstained but voiced “strong objections” to Ban’s…
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…rder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager and resident of East Jerusalem, created an “opportunity for us to have a very serious conversation,” said Goldman. That the opportunity came and went, and discussion of rising racism and violence in Israel was swallowed by the push to “stand with Israel” when Operation Protective Edge began. “I’m really afraid that Israel as an idea rather than Israel as reality has become such an essential totem…
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…sermons in the Times Square Disney Store. Soon, he had an ad-hoc choir, a crusade against corporatizing culture, and a “theology”: God is odd, an Unknown that appears precisely in the spaces where the predictability and packaging of big business is not. He called people to turn away from chain stores and toward each other, allowing themselves to see the miraculous “Godsightings” of ordinary life. Talen says he is not a Christian, but he came to lo…
Read More…racy-minded, us-versus-them attack ads are nothing new for this crew; its crusade against Obama and the Democrats in 2010, though, has explicitly religious intentions that both assert he is a Muslim and that he and the Democrats are anti-Christian. The 25-minute “Breaking Point” ad employs the narrative skills of African-American pastor E.W. Jackson, a favorite of the religious right who, in his recent “Open Letter to the Black Church Community,”…
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…on the LDS psyche—it only exposes it. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did cruel, cruel things to their followers and their wives as they taught and practiced the doctrine of polygamy. My ancestors, admittedly clannish, self-righteous people, paid for their faults by being repeatedly evicted from their homes and being threatened with extermination on order of the governor in Missouri. The Mormon migration to Utah involved tremendous suffering, as e…
Read More…to… oh, I dunno… STATE YOUR PURPOSE. Guys, it’s not like there’s a maximum word count. Unless… could it have something to do with what Irin Carmon reported in Salon: that Colorado-based Personhood USA has threatened to withdraw support if the Oklahoma bill is amended at all? Well, probably. In fact, despite the fact that it seems poised for a floor vote, and despite the likelihood that Governor Mary Fallin would sign it into law, I think SB-1433 i…
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…nistration. There are close to a million undocumented immigrants living in New York according to Pew Research, yet Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is also the Archbishop of New York, has done little to offer those immigrants reassurance that the Catholic church will stand up for them. In a Daily News op/ed, Dolan described immigrants as “a gift” to New York and stated that Trump has shown a lack of concern for immigrants. And New York’s Archbishop has…
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…like the one I presently attend, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. And, again, on the subject of the word “liberal,” Shakur is worth quoting at length: As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white s…
Read MoreWay down toward the bottom of the New York Times‘ report on this past weekend’s One Nation Working Together rally, you’ll find this paragraph: On Thursday [Glenn] Beck warned that the march included Marxist, Communist and revolutionary groups. Among the organizations endorsing the march were the Communist Party USA, the United Church of Christ, Jewish Funds for Justice, the National Urban League, the National Baptist Convention, People for the Am…
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