Religion Dispatches
…ject gun control for assault weapons, the very real threat of global climate change, and support the death penalty and ongoing war in Afghanistan? The evangelical crowd will be doing a lot of breast-beating over the next few months, as will Republicans in general. But this period can provide a learning experience for evangelicals if they choose to accept it. I hope they do, and thereby take advantage of the opportunity to return to their central…
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…+972 that by assassinating Jabari, “Barak and Netanyahu knocked one of the central pillars of the pragmatist camp within Hamas, the camp that sustained the detente with Israel and made efforts to bolster Hamas’ political credentials at the expense of its paramilitary wing.” Israel has an election coming up, which plays no small role here. Depressingly, Reider adds, “Israel’s opposition has never seemed as haggard as it does tonight.” Israeli write…
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…ser towards renewing the fabled harmony between humans and animals that is central to many paradise myths. He believed that anthropological data on shamans substantiated his claims. But he also believed that we see a clear example of this in the Christian figure of Saint Francis, who famously preached his gospels to the birds and the fish and has been formally declared the “patron saint of ecology.” The philosopher Jacques Derrida also argued, in…
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…apparently. From the beginning of Zionism, lack of self-respect has been a central fear in the movement. The first great Zionist writer, Leo Pinsker, condemned his fellow Jews for lack of self-respect and insisted that the only way they could regain it was to create their own nation. Today, as Lerner points out, that urge for self-respect has been distorted into the widespread Israeli fear of being a “freier”—a sucker—a fear of appearing weak and…
Read More…eir widely distributed, growing presence in the culture. They don’t have a central meeting house, a website, a leadership function. The bad news about this—beyond the practical difficulties of understanding this growing population in any real depth—is that Nones are fast becoming a vast tableau for the projected desires and anxieties of those of varying affiliations. For Christians, they are prodigals lost who, with the right music or marketing or…
Read More…t because the nones are defined by their lack of association—they have no “central meeting house”—they cannot be taken seriously as a group. This assumes that in order for a group to be politically relevant, they must all get together on Sundays or believe in the same set of theological doctrines. But that is a standard that is not applied to any other politically relevant demographic. Do white evangelicals all believe the same thing? Not in the l…
Read More…fifth to succeed from the Church, following the Dioceses of San Joaquin in central California; Fort Worth, Texas; Quincy, Illinois; and Pittsburgh, PA. A pastoral letter from Jefferts Schori to members of the Diocese, however, made clear that The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, as with other dioceses voting to secede, “continues to be a constituent part of The Episcopal Church, even if a number of its leaders have departed.” Steps have been…
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…graces. Pride is not the root of all sin, for some LGBT folks shame is the central sin. Are there any of these sins and graces that resonate more with you and why? The Queer Christ model that I call The Hybrid Christ, both divine and human—a blend of both. For me, as a queer person of color and an Asian American who is also gay, I often feel like I’m never able to bring the two together, I’m always forced to choose. Will I be Asian American today…
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…aid ‘Yes!’ to Jesus and ‘No!’ to the powers that killed him. Those are the central truths of Easter, as I see it. To turn the question of Easter into a conflict about whether the tomb was really empty is an enormous distraction. Getting back to what you said earlier about the community creating the Bible—what would it mean if people came to think this way about this sacred text? It would be very difficult to believe in biblical inerrancy or infall…
Read More…th the Rhode Island Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality are also taking a visible role in the marriage equality campaign. On Tuesday, Gov. Chafee stood with members of Rhode Islanders United for Marriage at a press conference at Central Congregational Church. Chafee invoked Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and icon of religious tolerance. Rev. Gene Dyszlewski, chair of the Religious Coalition, declared that “same-sex marriage is part…
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