Religion Dispatches
…dismay turned to laughter when I saw immediately below Winters’ screed the code of conduct for comments on National Catholic Reporter. His post is a primer on violating NCR’s own rules for respectful conversation. Maybe someone at NCR can give him a much-needed tutorial. NCR Comment code: Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Use appropriate language. Avoid vulgarities and slurs. Keep to the point. Deliberat…
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…ge your day-to-day relationship with tempting foods. Chocolate cake has to code-switch, from “a thing I want and must resist” to “a thing I don’t want right now,” and that happens in the ACC. As Roundling’s study shows, religious thoughts seem to help with short-term code switching because they offer a concrete set of alternative values. Similarly, when Warren says that caring for his body is a “stewardship issue,” he might be actively molding his…
Read More…d-down and unflinching personhood bill yet: the bill would amend the legal code to treat fetuses as persons at all stages of biological development. So what happened? Well, there was opposition, of course. People got nervous about the things that generally make a lot of people nervous about giving legal rights to fertilized eggs. What about in vitro fertilization? What about ectopic pregnancies? What about the liability of medical providers? The b…
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…ink a life-or-death question like that is unimportant, but using the legal code as a vehicle for a slogan is totally important and a good use of their time. 3. I would like them to say whether they think that families who’ve used assisted reproduction—like in vitro fertilization—should not have the children they have. And if that’s not what they think, then how can they explain why they’re supporting this legislation? 4. I would like them to say t…
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…s a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the BYU-Idaho testing center (responsible for administering academic examinations for many classes, especially large General Education courses) started interpreting and enforcing the school’s dress and grooming standards as a ban on “skinny jeans.” A flyer was posted by universit…
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…Black women, like Harriet Tubman, were often critical in leading people to freedom from bondage. Enslaved African Americans who became Christians were baptized by traditional doctrinal formulas. But, having endured the horror of the Middle Passage, black people had already been baptized by water and fire during their involuntary migration across the Atlantic Ocean. And this water imagery is not limited to the Christian imagination. “Lemonade” evok…
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…ubt that homosexuality is seen as a crime. Article 427 of the Afghan penal code refers only to “pederasty” – a sexual act between males, one of them understood to be a youth or a boy. The act is punishable with “long imprisonment”. However Dr Niaz Shah of Hull University in the UK, an expert in Afghan and Islamic law, says that the penal code reflects the underlying Islamic principle that homosexuality is banned. “Islamic law allows only one form…
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…lection. Then point out the evidence—that’s piling up already—suggesting they’ve been duped by a con-man who just last week admitted that he didn’t think anyone would take his pledge to “keep jobs in America” seriously. Call 1-844-USA-0234 and enter your zip code to be connected with your representatives in Washington. Tell them why you oppose each nominee, and keep calling. Ask your friends and neighbors to do the same. Use the liberal bubble so…
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…me-sex marriage, vote no,” said Abbott. “If you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech, vote no, and if you don’t like political correctness, vote no because voting no will help to stop political correctness in its tracks.” Later that day the director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, wrote that “the marriage plebiscite is a referendum on freedom of speech and ‘safe schools’”. He has lamented the “stolen generation…
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…would he? Clarence Thomas hasn’t recused himself, and the alleged “ethics code” is a joke. Noone’s coming to enforce it—and Alito knows it. He also seems very confident Democrats won’t try to impeach him (an effort that would probably fail, but would nevertheless be embarrassing and could damage the GOP in the run-up to a presidential election). And, to be honest, he’s probably spot-on about that. Dick Durbin, Democrat and Chair of the Senate Jud…
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