Religion Dispatches
…cal construct, I had already come upon in the Qur’an—although by using the phonetics alone. About the only thing that slowed down this rabid pace was becoming a mother. So I had two children (including one born in Libya, where the knots in my ear and my tongue were loosened) before I had a chance to pick up my love again. After one year in graduate school I spent a year in Cairo specifically for an intensive immersion study of the Arabic language….
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…tern civilization—how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” It was this statement that finally got Steve King, the former Iowa Republican, stripped of his committee assignments in the House of Representatives. This wasn’t the first time he’d signaled sympathy for the far right—after all, he’d had a long history of racist, bigoted remarks about immigrants and…
Read More…plays a very large role in affirming that LGBT people are no longer second-class citizens in our own country. I know that you have enjoyed the support of many people and you feel that your cause is just. But let’s be clear: you are no Rosa Parks; you are not the brave protesters who risked their lives to sit at an all-white lunch counter or tried to register to vote. You are George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door. You are the bus driver who…
Read More…ranchised—those less privileged due to cultural and societal views of sex, class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, education, poverty, age, etc.—through the implementation and support of policies that will better the over all quality of life and allow for human flourishing, recent history tells us that the “religious,” in many cases, will do the opposite. In fact, if we are not careful, those of us who happen to be marked by the afore…
Read More…ergy, and—you guessed it—human sexuality. After review, the films are then classified into the following categories: A-I—general patronage, A-II—adults and adolescents, A-III—adults, L—limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling, and O—morally offensive. Here is a sampling of movies in a few of the categories: A-I: The USCCB Office of Film and Broadcasting denotes that this category is rare as “nowadays…
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…822 slave uprising when it was discovered that long-time church member and class leader (and free person of color) Denmark Vesey had been preaching insurrection there. And now, in a distinctively American drama that never ends, the historic and brave Emanuel (“God with us”) African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston has been violated yet again, almost 200 years later, by murderous anti-black hatred. Very often shooting rampages in this coun…
Read More…d solidify, in a different way, the status of the LGBT community as second-class citizens, and even delay full equality. However, an unexpected effect of the crusade against same-sex marriage led by Liberty Counsel, the Coalition for Family, and the Romanian Orthodox Church is the unprecedented visibility and support Romanian LGBT activists have gained in 2016. One can’t help but notice that a long, cold winter for the Romanian LGBT community has…
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…oral and intellectual capital on these days. Newman, Old Tactics This is a classic example of making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill, a tactic well-known to Progressive Catholics. “Founded in 1993, The Cardinal Newman Society is dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities.” Translation: this small group, founded by Patrick J. Reilly, monitors speakers, professors, students…
Read More…ut McDonnell’s use of sources would be inadequate even in an undergraduate class. For example, he cites statistical evidence as the basis for his arguments, but checking his references we find that his source is not a scholarly report but an un-footnoted reference by a Christian Reconstructionist pastor, Ray Sutton, in a little book written for Gary North’s “Biblical Blueprint” series. The book is written at a level appropriate for a church Bible…
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…The Economist of “anti-capitalist Muslims” joining the protesters, a whole class of religious Muslims that, as Mustafa Akyol has reported, disagree with Erdogan. I didn’t get to meet any so described. But their very presence underlines what I found. I met lots of religious Turks unhappy with Erdogan. Many Turks who expressed sympathy for, or were members of, Sufi orders believed that Erdogan had gone too far—not just with the protests in the park,…
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