Religion Dispatches
…to a fight in a bar, or behaves inappropriately with women, or commits any number of minor sins which ordinary people get away with every day—he lets down not only himself and his family, but his faith community and the Asian-American (and to some extent Asian) community as a whole, which currently views him as a hero. Can you imagine the pressure? And yet, so far at least, neither Tebow nor Lin has fallen. No crashed cars at three a.m., no extram…
Read More…ndidate pledges support for marriage equality “Shih Ming-teh, the former chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said he will allow same-sex marriage” if he becomes president, reported Chinatopix. In December 2014, Taiwan’s Legislature reviewed a bill to legalize gay marriage, making Taiwan the first East Asian country which has reviewed a same-sex marriage bill in the parliamentary level. The bill was stalled however because Min…
Read More…l processes must be open and fair. The United States prides itself on its fair and open process. There was nothing fair and open about how these workers were treated – plead guilty so you can get a mere five months in jail and be deported faster than sitting in jail longer and then being deported. And what was the point of shackling all these workers together and forcing decisions to be made in seven days? The U.S. judicial process can treat peopl…
Read More…ous freedom, rather than the need to protect families. – The LDS Public Affairs office actually used the term ‘gay’ to describe individuals, rather than-sex attracted or same-gender attracted in its response to HRC’s criticisms of Pres. Packer’s October 2010 conference talk. – The LDS Church came out in support of non-discrimination ordinances in Salt Lake City which would protect homosexuals in housing and employment. While there are large carve-…
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…Baghdad of 23 men it said were gay and another man accused of having long hair. One month later, two allegedly gay youths, aged between 15 and 17, were attacked and beheaded with their heads thrown in a rubbish bin, said a witness to the attack. A subsequent attack on a Baghdad brothel, thought to have been carried out by the same militia, killed about 34 people, most of them women. Turkey: A Country Divided on LGBT Issues Rev. Irene Monroe writes…
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…preparation, and visits to the sick. Bishop Ruiz elevated an extraordinary number of Maya men to the permanent diaconate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program cam…
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…e a Covid-19 vaccine, while a number of other studies have also found that number hovering close to 25 percent. Journalists and academics alike have attempted to make sense of this discrepancy, pointing to existential fear, anti-intellectualism, and Christian nationalism as potential influences on American evangelicals’ vaccine antipathy. As a scholar of American evangelicalism and media, I am inclined to agree with all of these insights, but my e…
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…the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Covid-19 in a Chinese lab to help a demonic caba…
Read More…nd other Christians marching together at Pride. In recent years, the small number of Christians who turn up to protest against Pride have been vastly outnumbered by the Christians participating in it. Hill also noted religious support in the UK last April for a new law “to allow religious elements in civil partnerships, while last year the Quakers became the first major Christian denomination to resolve to carry out same-sex marriages.” Even here…
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…a—I don’t know if I should say unusual, but I can say that there’s a large number of religious organizations in Houston. I think that’s patently obvious, but also true from the research. There are potential civic resources through those religious organizations. You saw it in the kerfuffle about Lakewood, the big church there on the freeway, opening its doors. And people saying “why isn’t this enormous church opening its doors for people as a shelt…
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