Religion Dispatches
…those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, in the oceans and beaches, in the marshes and ecosystems, and in our communities. We have been slow, too slow by far, to realize th…
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…fans among the expo’s 40,000 visitors. “Some Christians Think We are Just Cheap Harlots” “A lot of guys pose for photos with us and when they go home and look up what’s on our T-shirts, they learn what we’re about,” Lobért explained to Telegraph reporter Philip Sherwell. “We call it booby-trapping.” But those who attend adult entertainment fairs aren’t exactly Lobért’s target audience. Her conspicuous appearance is also meant to attract the other…
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…n North Carolina. Referring to Bakker’s theological “feel-good stance” as “cheap grace,” Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League attributed Bakker’s preaching of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free…
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…very difficult to extract should the politicians ever want to. Already outnumbering the regular soldiers deployed in Iraq, this highly adaptable force blurs the lines between business and warfare, military and civilian. Contractors have taken part in human trafficking, accounting fraud, and murderous outbursts that usually escape prosecution. In place of religious fundamentalism, their way of warfare follows another kind of science: that of Ameri…
Read More…tween the bunnies-and-eggs version of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always con…
Read More…credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign energy sources, having failed to turn to renewables while mindlessly pumping more cheap petroleum into our veins. Like other critics of the new encyclical, Brooks chalks up the pope’s hostility to capitalism as the product of naivete or perhap…
Read More…icans share a common antagonist in the conservative religious right of the United States. While this group continues to oppose public policies in the U.S. “that would benefit low-income people, which we think would also benefit black and brown people,” they are also working against LGBTI rights abroad because they feel they have lost the culture war at home…. TFAM is currently working in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, the eastern part of the Democratic Re…
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…orts site, features the Zorros Club de Futbol, an amateur soccer team from Mexico City whose players are gay; a number of team players have been denied visas to participate in the World Out Games in Miami in May. United Kingdom: Mapping identifies concentrations of LGBT people beyond London While the U.S. Census Bureau will not document the LGBT population in the 2020 census, the UK’s Office for National Statistics has mapped the country’s GLB pop…
Read More…in Asia: At a time when laws legalizing same-sex marriage are sweeping the United States, Latin America and Europe, gay rights advocates across Asia are still struggling to secure basic protections. Brunei has instituted strict Shariah laws that criminalize gay relationships, conservative legislators in the Indonesian province of Aceh passed an ordinance last month punishing gay sex with 100 lashes, and on Wednesday the highest court in Singapore…
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…op 20 box office chart – that it is been shown on 21 screens this weekend. Mexico: Marriage Equality on the Slow but Steady March A court granted an amparo, or injunction, to 10 same-sex couples seeking to get married in the state of Baja California, another step in the steady march of marriage equality through Mexico’s complex judicial system. The first public same-sex marriage in Tabasco drew television coverage. Journalist Rex Wockner explains…
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