Religion Dispatches
…ogy. In fact, the official pronouncements of the mental health professions are clear that scientific evidence does not warrant psychologists telling a client that therapy can change orientation. In fairness, there are small groups of therapists associated with religious groups who question the APA’s findings. However, most of the therapists who argue with the APA are associated with churches and organizations which see homosexual behavior as immor…
Read More…rcent of countries, those who attend religious services less than once a year are 23 percent more supportive of LGBT equality than those who attend services weekly. But economic development seems to matter most. According to Andrew Park and Andrew Flores of the Williams Institute, “Residents of countries whose economies that are in the top quartile are on average twelve times more likely to be supportive of homosexuality than residents of countrie…
Read More…ss universal, Jewish experiences. Ironically, this choice is at once too particular, and not particular enough. It excludes many Jews, and perhaps deliberately depicts Jewishness 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 p…
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…family life, as the story depicted. It is not surprising that a fourteen-year marriage would be a strong pull toward resolving an identity clash in favor of existing commitments—especially when those commitments are seen as reflections of God’s will. And while a pull that strong still does not make heterosexual married life possible for many homosexually-oriented men, for those whom it does it is important to acknowledge that changing orientation…
Read More…ing, as Mary Hunt points out, a book by the highly regarded nun-ethicist, Margaret A. Farley, and representatives of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) flying to Rome to defend themselves from accusations of “radical feminism.” One of the meanings of this “radical feminism,” in case you’re wondering, is that the LCWR “never revoked a statement from 1977 that questioned the male-only priesthood,” and has failed to speak out against…
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…ate has crashed since 2007—led by a sharp decline in immigrant fertility, particularly among Hispanics. What’s changed since then? Hint: it’s not a radical change in the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. In fact, a few peaks and valleys aside, the US birth rate has been pretty stable since 1970, and in recent years everyone has had fewer children. So if we’re going to find an explanation of church declines, we’ll have to look somewhere else….
Read More…ved an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things. In many ways I feel that the American attachment to sensationalism, half truths and fear makes your perspective all the more important. I work with internationals at WSU and lately have made some friends among the Islamic community. I have studied side by side with some of these guys and co…
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…candidate on the campaign trail in Florida. Religious differences (the Duggars are Baptists who have followed the fundamentalist teachings of Bill Gothard, while Santorum is a staunch Catholic) seem barely a second thought among supporters, who take for granted that fidelity to culture war issues supercedes faith. There, the Duggars and Santorum seem to speak with one voice. At CPAC in February, Michelle Duggar participated in a panel satirizing T…
Read More…church-state separation mean. Many of the organizations and activists who are part of a coalition of church-state separation advocates have long done stellar work in raising awareness of encroachment of religion in politics and policy-making. Being able to keep the pressure on church-state separation issues during a campaign season will be the test of the movement’s political muscle. It might make Rick Santorum throw up, but that’s kind of the po…
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…aith conference for which I had come to speak. The conference was held in early March at Utah Valley University, a publicly funded university in Orem, Utah, about one hour south of Salt Lake City. Audience participants and sponsors from both BYU and UVU helped bring the event into being. During our conversation in the car en route to Orem, I confessed to Alasdair that I wasn’t sure how the event would go. The student body at BYU is 98.5% Mormon, a…
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