Religion Dispatches
…bsessed with church/state separation and battling creationists. Again, the number of atheists of color has grown, but the atheist movement as a whole has not embraced the issues that people of color struggle with on a daily basis. For example, the wealth gap between blacks and whites is more pronounced now than during the Brown vs. Board era. When I drive around in my community I see scores of abandoned businesses, boarded up buildings, vacant lo…
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…nd liberated possibilities (thanks again, Joe Biden). But who knew it would turn out that the NFL has a thing or two to teach the gospel church—born of, but these days largely in flight from, the legacy of King and Rustin and Baldwin—about love, acceptance, and the struggle to overcome in a world of injustice?…
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…ell every six months. But the string of replies to the tweet, as well as a number of pained blog posts, make clear that Driscoll’s rhetoric is at least as alienating to thoughtful Christians across the ideological spectrum as it is titillating to his followers. For those Christians often straining to sustain their identification and affiliation with one or another branch of the Christian family, Driscoll comes off like the ranting, half-drunk cous…
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…nes, known to all Americans and read by many—especially in airports. On my flight to Istanbul, Time was available in the first airport lounge, Newsweek in the second. Against a backdrop of shouting mobs, smoke and fire, Time’s headline reads: THE AGENTS OF OUTRAGE An embassy attacked. Diplomats murdered. The new calculus of violence against America. Published on September 13, its author is Bobby Ghosh, senior editor for Time International. Then, f…
Read More…bortion provider, the patient’s medical history, or—for a relatively small number of women—an aversion to the transvaginal method. Most of the time, however, the transvaginal ultrasound is a useful and common tool that helps providers perform abortions safely and well. As Joffe points out, soon after the transvaginal-as-rape meme took flight, “Will abortion clinic staff who perform the ultrasound be seen as ‘rapists,’ as the provider I mentioned e…
Read More…ire-in-the-belly of a Donnie Osmond. His greatest hits? “Nancy Pelosi’s numbers have being going down a chute faster than a Jet Blue flight attendant” and “President Obama’s idea of a rogue state is Arizona.” As for the substance of Romney’s speech, what was most notable was the absence of talk about values, let alone religion. Instead, Romney sounded every bit the corporate buyout and turnaround specialist, criticizing the “anti-growth,” “…
Read More…I to judge?” statement while aboard the papal plane. Since that fateful in-flight press conference, I have been told countless times (often by well-meaning, heterosexual Catholics) that I should find hope and comfort in the pope because he has opened up the doors to mercy for me and my lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer friends. But mercy, it seems to me, is not the door that LGBTQ people need opened to them. Mercy is an act of love, co…
Read More…no office I could do to secure what was demanded of me, so the day for my flight came and went and the ticket never got used. During that year, a woman read my tea leaves after supper with some of my new friends. If you don’t know how that works, first I drank a cup of tea with leaves still settled at the bottom. Once the liquid is mostly all drunk, the reader takes the leaves, swishes them around in the bottom of the cup, turns the cup upside do…
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…gned amidst the allegations, along with Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché. On the flight back to Rome, Pope Francis was asked why he felt the need to offer consolation to the Bishops over the sexual abuse scandal in America. Clarifying his comments, he said that his words of comfort were not meant to downplay the situation but that “It was so bad I imagine you cried hard.” He also reiterated “those who covered this up are guilty. Even bishops who covered…
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…ogically, in particular to African Americans. King’s tweet referenced the “Flight into Egypt” (Matthew 2:13) when the holy family were called to flee to Egypt to avoid the “massacre of the innocents” by King Herod. This scriptural reference has served as a prooftext that Jesus and his family were going to hide amongst “Black” people in Africa away from the fury of an infanticidal despot, hence King’s emphasis on “EGYPT” not Denmark (Europe). King…
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