Religion Dispatches
…Plan” campaign. Alston said he hopes to organize 500 community screenings between now and the film’s official release in the fall. Robinson says he has found that nothing works better to change hearts and minds than LGBT people telling their own stories—or allies telling the story of someone they love, such as a child, aunt or uncle, or friend. He recalls making a too-flippant comment at some event asking how straight white men could “get it” in…
Read More…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…
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…o like children. The adults in Ramona’s world are basically decent, or at least not mean. (If there is a villain in the series, it’s Mrs. Kemp, who uses Ramona for free babysitting while being paid to babysit Ramona.) But Cleary’s stories are delicate enough to reveal the stakes. In Ramona the Brave, she describes a feeling that adult readers may recognize: “Ramona was startled, then embarrassed. Once more she felt as if she were standing aside, s…
Read More…he listserv (which, with a brilliant lack of self-awareness, is called the Freedom Community): This kind of anti-Israel sentiment is so fringe it’s support by CAP is outrageous, but at least it is out in the open now — as is their goal – clearly applauded by revolting allies like the pro-HAMAS and anti-Zionist/One State Solution advocate Ali Abunumiah and those who accuse pro-Israel Americans of having ”dual loyalties” or being ”Israel-Firsters” –…
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…under the First Amendment. We think it’s time for us all to seek religious freedom for reproductive freedom, and to recognize that persistent efforts to interfere in reproductive decisions is “an infringement of a natural right” in the sense the Virginia Statute warned. Of course, women didn’t share in this natural right at the time—but the right to believe differently than the rich and the powerful as codified in the Statute and the First Amendme…
Read More…exuberance. Sorta like skydiving tandem before following up my lessons for free-fall skydiving. That way I can focus on the details I am trying to learn now and be better prepared. As far as umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, goes; it stands to reason that people can visit the ka’abah any time of the year. And so it is. There are still the same ihram prescriptions. There are still certain rites that should be performed. But unless a journey to Makkah c…
Read More…n. Anytime you have a stratified society in which there is a strong divide between elites and masses or between rich and poor, those who find themselves in a disadvantaged position naturally feel resentment. That resentment can be a powerful tool of democratic social change, but it can also be a tool of oppression—depending on where the emotion is directed. Historically, resentment has been the emotion that elites feared the most—because it inspir…
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…orld transformation seem equally troubling. Perhaps these days we would be better off considering the “solemnity of this day.” One hundred years ago, another African American graduate of Harvard and Senate-candidate W. E. B. Du Bois prayed with his students at Atlanta University: “Give us this night, O God, Peace in our land and the long silence that comes after strain and upheaval. Let us sense the solemnity of this day – its mighty meaning, its…
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…aped their practice in ways different from white Spiritualists in the Northeast U.S. While many Spiritualists were abolitionists, their whiteness and white privilege was an ever-present part of their religious practice. American politics and society based their hierarchies in part on racial difference, but the spirits communicating with the Cercle Harmonique denied the ontology of race. Though many of their Spiritualist contemporaries believed tha…
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…l church in the mid-1990s—he’s used elective office to advance a rightwing religious agenda. Throughout his political career, Pence has ardently opposed abortion, gay rights, trade unions, and environmental legislation. He has championed deregulation as well as for tax cuts for the wealthy, and a free market that neither bails out failing companies nor assists unemployed workers. Is Pence the last gasp of the baby boom hegemony—a misguided generat…
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