Religion Dispatches
…llow Arabs, demonized and derided for years, such that their blood becomes cheap. This happens all too often with minorities; what is unique about the Arab world is the degree to which many dictatorships also oppress the majority. My point in that essay about Tunisia was that we in America and the West generally reflexively associate secularism with what is good and democratic, and conservatism (specifically, in Islam) with that which is antidemo…
Read More…lete Socolovsky from the email chain. When Merritt’s assistant scheduled a phone meeting with Gallagher to discuss the contract in April of this year, Gallagher never informed Socolovsky about it. When Merritt finally reached Gallagher on the phone in April of this year, he says Gallagher was “placing the blame [for the delay] on Jerome” for not reading Merritt’s emails, which “was all very weird and unprofessional, and it made me uncomfortable.”…
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…serious danger to women and trans men, were introduced by Herndon. In her phone interview with RD, Abbott brought up the December 22 service as an example of likely illegal political organizing by a tax-exempt church, which she says is one of her biggest concerns. A self-described “fourth-generation Bonner County girl” who forthrightly states, “I deeply care about consensus issues; I hate political parties,” Abbot referred to the year of Trump’s…
Read More…ch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the Leviticus view of homosexuality as an abomination also extended to eating shrimp, and how civil marriage licenses are distinct from religious weddings. Most of the calls lasted mere seconds, with people not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed…
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…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…
Read More…Obama’s National Catholic Outreach Coordinator] informing him of the three phone calls, requesting that he respond to my question: ‘I would like to know whether the Catholic National Advisory Council for Sen. Obama is still operative.’ He has not replied. Donohue’s statement continued: It would appear, then, that the group no longer exists. It is not hard to understand why. After being criticized by the Catholic League, Archbishop Joseph Naumann…
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…r pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this year, when Jawaid and…
Read More…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…
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…ion by joining other denominations or leaving Christianity altogether. The number of priests and nuns was at an all-time low even before the recent sexual scandals, and the number of self-identified Catholics world-wide keeps declining. Many of those who remain in the Church ignore standard doctrines and believe what they want. How many Catholics disobey Church rules? About as many as the angels dancing on a pinhead. Believers know that Jesus prom…
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…e Common Good, favors making abortion illegal, and only views reducing the number of abortions as an interim step toward that goal. It is hard to take seriously a movement that thinks they can dramatically reduce the number of abortions while largely ignoring or denying the issue of access to contraception—including emergency contraception. One understands that they feel their hands are tied by the official position of the Catholic church against…
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