Religion Dispatches
…[Editor’s Note: After this post went up I received an email from Focus on the Family’s newsletter, Citizenlink, telling the story of a woman whose former wife is seeking custody of their daughter, Isabella. Citizenlink…
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…Right. Iowa was the proving ground for the nascent Religious Right back in 1978 when pro-life activists conducted a stealth campaign against incumbent Senator Dick Clark, who political pundits almost universally regarded as a shoo-in for reelection. During the final weekend of that campaign, pro-life activists—most of them were Roman Catholics; evangelicals, by and large, did not mobilize on the abortion issue until later—distributed leaflets in…
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…t to the department a long time ago—but it still seems daunting to make it official. What do you think? MH: You’ve taken quite a few Religious Studies courses, and you’ve watched me teach for years, so you have some idea what you’re getting yourself into. How do you see the pros and cons? LH: Yeah, I’ve taken five classes. My favorites were “Gender in US Religion,” “Religion and Immigration,” and “The Bible and Human Rights.” I love the field and…
Read More…s mostly peaceful. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 marchers were protected from about 200 counter-protesters by 600 police. Also in attendance were several ambassadors, including American Ambassador James Warlick, who told a Bulgarian TV station, “We should all live our lives the way we wish… No one should be abused and tortured because of some prejudice.” The Orthodox Church had called for the march to be b…
Read More…ject to a great deal of debate. But I think we should all agree that these numbers are not only grim, but after 15 years, they are intolerable. For if we believe that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, then we cannot accept the ongoing marginalization of half the world’s population. We cannot accept it morally, politically, socially, or economically. But speaking to a room of the world’s most powerful people who h…
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…very embarrassing and persistent problem has arisen in some of the sacred sites in Jerusalem where Christians and Jews cross each other’s paths. Teenagers from a small sector of the city’s many Ultra-Orthodox (“Haredi”) Ashkenazi Jewish communities have taken to spitting at clerics wearing prominent crosses and dressed in traditional garb. Assaults have been recorded at the Jaffa and Damascus Gates of the walled Old City, an area with many histor…
Read More…economy back on track. In short, the dialogue should proceed as follows: Q.: Is the President really a Christian? I mean, does his really really for reals love him some Jesus? A.: Listen, pinhead: the official unemployment rate is almost 10%. The real rate is more like 17%. I don’t care if the President worships a goat. This seems utterly simple. It can also be deployed against the pretensions of certain media figures of being “spiritual leaders.”…
Read More…ing Argentina’s 370,000 Mormons to review the Proclamation on the Family, a 1995 doctrinal statement on gender and family issues. The letter reportedly does not take an official position on the legislation or ask members to donate of their time and means, as did a similar letter read to California Mormon congregations in June 2008 at the beginning of the Proposition 8 campaign. Although billed as one element of a faith-based “Yes on 8” coalition,…
Read More…al responsibility for the care of souls, and that unlike an actual elected official, Beck has no actual responsibility for devising practicable solutions to incredibly thorny problems like financial market meltdowns, runaway health care costs, or ending the costly and ill-conceived wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, it is in fact easier to pray on your knees (as Beck exhorted his audience Saturday) than it is to wrap your head around credit-defaul…
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…institutional heterosexism in the church and in society, but also to bring spiritual healing to LGBT people who have been hurt by the church and society. For LGBT people to be told over and over again that we are not spiritual beings is an atrocity. It is so against a God of love and justice.” Furthermore, the trial, which has received considerable attention inside and outside the denomination, will be an opportunity to put human faces on the issu…
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