Religion Dispatches
…th Texas Women on Facebook, I heard Texas Sen. Donna Campbell on the local news declare that “Democracy was traded for mobocracy” during the successful filibuster. Mobocracy, really? Needless to say, the proverbial line was drawn in the sand, yet again. The orange-clad were directed to arrive at the Capitol the following day, July 2, ready to register their stance on HB2 and, if desired, to sign up to testify before the House State Affairs Committ…
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…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…
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…enured defense of guns. Andy Parker, father of Alison Parker, the Virginia news anchor who was murdered in August while reporting live, suggested that these invocations of prayers and positive thoughts are code words for deliberate political inaction by elected officials. The theological commentary on this shooting is what my grandmother would describe as “too heavenly minded and no earthly good.” These conversations about prayer reflect a graver…
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…the many differences between various Jewish and Christian sects in how to number and interpret these different sets of commandments. All of this I explain in my book, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. Seemingly small differences are magnified because Christianity has historically claimed to possess ultimate truth, so any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. Minor variations are further magnified by, as James…
Read More…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…
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…map (as compiled by Salatomatic, an Islamic guide to mosques) compiled the number of mosques per state, while the second, using U.S. Department of State data, charts the number of refugees arriving in each state (from October 2014-July 2015), and the third offers “a compilation of Islamic terror activity by state” pairing the names of organizations with U.S. cities (for instance, Boca Raton, Florida, is flagged for “Al Qaeda”). The source for this…
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…is that the rhetoric being used by Campus Reform and their ilk is far from new to me or fellow researchers working on racial justice in American Buddhism. Rather it echoes some of the white Buddhist backlash to racial justice work. A number of white Buddhists* have adopted the language of “invasion” and “infection” in an attempt to discredit long overdue racial justice initiatives in their communities. Popular Zen teacher Brad Warner, for instance…
Read More…ons in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptized we have you; you’re ours and you don’t have much to say about it.” Recent reports indicate that about 350 congregations have departed to affiliate with more conservative Anglican Bishops outside the US. Whether the remaining congregations are better off or not…
Read More…ious believers—a striking shift from the hard-hitting argumentation of the New Atheist movement—and ends up humanizing atheism while he’s at it. New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and so on—have been all about the polemic. But you chose to write in a very different genre: memoir. Why? Interfaith work gives a central place to the idea of exchanging stories to create more understanding and enrich the quality of the con…
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…ly accepted norm. According to a recent article on The Root, an increasing number of black girls are being sold into prostitution and sex trafficking, while “in both the international and national anti-trafficking movements, black girls who are victims of prostitution are invisible.” In a review of the new book Girls Like Us by sex trafficking activist Rachel Lloyd, writer Rinku Sen notes, the black and Latina girls with whom Lloyd works are thou…
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