Religion Dispatches
…to themselves and the husband and/or able-bodied men in the family. It’s true, the men get no vacation days for menstruation, but in most families, women are still the ones most heavily engaged in food preparation. That is, fasting or not, they arise before the suhur is consumed to prepare what will be partaken. They also prepare food for the younger children on the regular non-Ramadan fasting schedule. The children are not fasting. They are hung…
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…in the defining black social gospel claim that the church had to deal constructively with modern intellectual criticism, emphasize the social ethical teaching of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets, struggle for social justice, and defy white racism. His teachers blended abolitionist and social gospel interpretations of the Bible and Christian theology. They took up the usual social gospel debates over industrialization, economic justice, migration, and…
Read More…ore the most important election of our lifetimes.” In an email to Faith and Freedom Coalition supporters, he says he is in “urgent need of donations to fully fund the final phase of the $30 MILLION Battle Plan we are putting in place to generate a record-breaking turnout of conservative, Christian and pro-freedom voters for the elections on November 2.” In March, I wrote about how the Faith and Freedom Coalition was unfolding in the states by aimi…
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…ampuses is because people find her offensive or uninteresting. We may not trust peer review, but we can trust the market. Hence stunts like bus ‘advertisements’. 7:38 Geller says, ‘I was a freedom lover.’ So am I. As a freedom lover, I’m clutching an empty coffee cup that had had tea in it with one hand, and scribbling with the other. I’m mostly looking down, because I’m worried. Sporadic waves of applause have degenerated into a rawer and unrestr…
Read More…ng “antics” over at Dove Outreach, the event will feature prayer and bread breaking, with bread from “all over the world,” much of it donated by local establishments. Pastor Johnson indicated that the event will include a spectrum of religious traditions from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim to Baha’i and Hare Krishna (nearby Alachua is home to home of the largest Hare Krishna communities in the United States). In addition to participating in this ev…
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…uld never change the fact that it was the Catholic Church’s apostasy from true Christianity that had ultimately led to the need for Joseph Smith’s restoration of the true church. Evangelicals were far more critical of Vatican II’s reforms. In keeping with their longstanding attacks on Catholicism, evangelicals largely saw Vatican II as part of the Catholic Church’s plans to monopolize Christianity and make all Christians submit to Rome. However, e…
Read More…single-handedly solved by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Need birth control? Just run over to 7-11 and pick some up. Appearing on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Dolan praised the plaintiffs in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case as inspiring examples of American religious conviction and told guest host Norah O’Donnell that cutting contraception out of insurance policies wasn’t a problem: Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available—my…
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…fend their old friends and their new allies. The old friends hate them for breaking ranks and the new allies hate them even more for being untrustworthy and weak. Niebuhr’s courage to change was one of his chief strengths, although some things about him did not change. He always aspired to realism, even as a pacifist. He thrived on paradox almost to the point of treating it as a criterion of truth. He never relinquished the defining Social Gospel…
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…uite different when they become quantifiable, static, and searchable by keyword. As the old internet saw goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product being sold. Every tweet is a commodity, even the prayerful ones, and the cash value of prayers is a question Rome might not care to revisit. There is also the matter of the company praying tweets can’t help but keep. In addition to being brought to the Vatican as part of the spectac…
Read More…ural signposts like TV shows and film trends. How do I know whether I’ve struck the right balance of “in the world, not of it?” And, like Hornaday, I’ve gotten some strange reactions to my faith from people in my field. I’m not an evangelist in the slightest, but several times, passages that were vaguely suggestive of my personal religious beliefs have been chopped by editors for being “too personal” or “tangential.” And maybe they were. But also…
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