Religion Dispatches
…ciate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, and the founder of Farm Forward, met with Cubit co-editor Andrew Aghapour at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to explore how religion applies to elephants, dogs, chimpanzees, and factory farming. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. As a scholar of religion, why do you think it’s wrong see religion as exclusive to humans? I think most of…
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…riend of mine linked to this article by Stephen Smith of the University of San Diego. In a nutshell, Dr. Smith’s article makes the point that the discussion on gay marriage has inappropriately focused on the issue of “equality” and should redirect its attention to the definition of “marriage.” As one can deduce from, say, the strategic placement of this link in paragraph 14, the implicit argument is that marriage is best defined as a one-man-one-w…
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…er book called Struggle and Survival in Israel/Palestine, coedited with UC San Diego professor Gershon Shafir, that is attempting to bring the voices and stories of everyday people from the two communities over the last century to the public without the filter of scholars or politically motivated commentators. At the same time, I’m cowriting a book for UC Press on public spheres in the Muslim world with my good friend and colleague Armando Salvato…
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…much beyond that. “Do I pray? Sure, you could call it that,” a woman from San Diego who described herself as “almost an atheist” told me. She continued: I sit quietly every so often during the week. I try to calm my thinking. Sometimes I’m hoping for something for myself or someone else, but I don’t have to be. I think that’s what most people mean by “prayer.” It’s not so much about “talking to God” or “saving your soul.” It’s just about settling…
Read More…sbians give up their grip on the rainbow. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the San Diego-based Ruth Institute [a project of the National Organization for Marriage] rightly argues that the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with man, and she says proponents of Proposition 8—California’s measure that passed in 2008 to define marriage as between a man and a woman—are the original “rainbow coalition.” “Proposition 8 was passed by a great grassroots coali…
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…est boasted online of his March arson attack on a mosque in Escondido, San Diego County. So, Earnest wasn’t prepared to leave matters to Providence here, either, but instead nudged it along by seeking to replace the new Muslim replacers all the while making sure that the long-replaced Jews in Poway stayed securely in place. So however sincere the Earnest family may have been in absolving their religious community of any connection to the Poway att…
Read More…d: Rachel Barenblat Congregation Beth Israel, North Adams MA Joanna Brooks San Diego State University Sharon Brous IKAR Linell Cady Arizona State University John Caputo Syracuse University Rachel Cowan George Mason University, Gary Dorrien Union Theological Seminary Eddie Glaude Princeton University Harry Knox Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Ira Lapidus University of California at Berkeley Khalid Latif New York University Kathryn Lofto…
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…ition and Focus on the Family, and Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego. Also present were Rick Scarborough, founder and president of Vision America, and David Barton, president of WallBuilders; both men have fashioned entire careers out of their denials that the founders ever intended church and state to be separate entities. The meeting (as reported on the website) contained more than the usual over-the-top Religious Right rhetoric…
Read More…Tears flowed freely when the Affirmation choir of gay and lesbian Mormons sang the stirring Mormon classic “The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning”—the very hymn our ancestors sang to dedicate the Kirtland temple 175 years ago, in 1836, on a day when, as the folklore goes, neighboring villages reported seeing a cloud of fire hovering over Kirtland. Standing in the sunlit white interiors of the temple, Liam, a young gay LDS man who had travelled…
Read More…ition and Focus on the Family, and Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego. Also present were Rick Scarborough, founder and president of Vision America, and David Barton, president of WallBuilders; both men have fashioned entire careers out of their denials that the founders ever intended church and state to be separate entities. The meeting (as reported on the website) contained more than the usual over-the-top Religious Right rhetoric…
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