Religion Dispatches
…v. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, a professor of religion and history who will lead the Southwest California Synod. From GLAAD: Because he is openly gay and partnered, Dr. Erwin did not seek ordination in the ELCA when he was completing seminary. Instead, he completed a PhD in Lutheran history and spent most of his career as a teacher of Lutheran history. He met his partner Rob Flynn while he was studying for this PhD at Yale University. He and Rob are members…
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…uisition, was a response to Catharism, a dualist heresy that flourished in southwest France at the turn of the 13th century. A bloody twenty-year crusade stamped out the overt practice of Catharism, though underground its embers continued to smolder. Thus in 1231, Pope Gregory IX created the role of inquisitor, a “detective, prosecutor, and judge rolled into one,” as Murphy puts it. Usually a Dominican friar, the inquisitor moved fast, traveling w…
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…ng event in Sedona cost each participant more than $9,000. A search of any number of Web sites advertising these “Indian ceremonies” will turn up sweat lodges that average over $100 per event, and four-day “vision quests” going for around five hundred dollars, “all meals included” and “Visa and MasterCard accepted.” Indians all across the country are upset, saying white people stole the land, killed the buffalo, and now want to steal the religion….
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…day at 6 p.m. and say a prayer for “Grandmother Earth.” He asked Landry, a southwest Louisiana songwriter and emerging grassroots activist, to introduce his campaign to communities in the region, including Indian Nations such as the Choctaw and the Houma. “People in southern Louisiana are people of faith,” Landry said. “Even if you don’t believe in God, it still can bring people together.” While President Obama, in his much-debated Oval Office Add…
Read More…alysis of the “volume of prayers being offered” is overlaid with data on a number of social problems, to compare the “prayer years with the post prayer years.” The removal of prayer from public schools lowered the amount of prayer being offered to such a degree that its impact was felt, not just in the schools, but in every aspect of our national life! Never mind that just because two things seem to happen at the same time doesn’t make them causal…
Read More…nslated into a handful of European languages and Tongan. A few years ago, I spent a whole morning tuning into the various real-time translation streams on-line. As someone who has spent some time in the Navajo Southwest, I listened longest to Conference in the beautiful Dine Bizaad—Navajo language. Ya’a’teeh, brothers and sisters. Happy conference weekend. And welcome to 21st century Mormonism….
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…campaign against Perriello, a Democrat representing a swath of central and southwest Virginia who was once considered a poster child for the Democrats’ faith outreach. After helping to launch Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faithful America, Perriello beat Republican incumbent Virgil Goode in 2008, but is now virtually tied in the polls with his Republican challenger Robert Hurt. The ad, which FRC considers “one of the most humorous”…
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During five years of research in southwest Louisiana for my book “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” I came to know many white, older tea party enthusiasts. Nearly all now support Donald Trump. It was because of his penchant for conspiracies, not in spite of it. – Arlie Russell Hochschild, Washington Post, 11/7/16 In mid-October Alex Jones, host of Infowars, infamous breeding ground of conspiracy theories, ann…
Read More…put out the following statement from Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference: Though the Senate failed to supply the necessary leadership to provide humane and effective solutions to the badly broken immigration system, the DREAM Act students have shown themselves to be our leaders not only for tomorrow, but for today as well. These are students who desire nothing less than to serve their country – the only country many of them…
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…streets of 21stcentury Tokyo, 19th century rural Paraguay, and Paleolithic southwest France? Do you understand human nature by finding fixed laws? Or do you grasp it by understanding the rules of humankind’s incredible un-fixedness? Shortly after finishing Barash’s book, I read a new essay by the photography critic Teju Cole. Reviewing photographer Steve McCurry’s new collection of photos of India, Cole makes a distinction between an individual pi…
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