Religion Dispatches
…unctioning autonomously from male authority, even in the process of finding a mate. Girls are to rely on their fathers to do this for them and remain in submission to their fathers until they have been given over to submit to their husbands. These organizations all promote literature, lectures, conferences, and other materials intended to promote this perspective, as well as the starkly delineated gender norms and expectations upon which this view…
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…mes I will cover that day. When we write articles, we usually focus on one central argument. Our best books, in turn, most often contain only a few more major themes. No doubt creating a television documentary about any historical topic requires a reduction in complexity and nuance. But so does delivering a good lecture and writing a good monograph. Yet scholars tend to hold filmmakers to different standards than they hold their academic peers, an…
Read More…DeMint reportedly said that people encouraged him in his position limiting freedom for gays and lesbians, saying he “shouldn’t back down. [The people who agree with him] don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.” As I reported here months ago, DeMint has been using a Christian Reconstructionist group’s mailing list for fundraising, indicating that, at least in part, he thinks he and they are compatible. Reconstructi…
Read More…’s primaries, pundits have pondered whether the far right character of the Republican nominees will make them unelectable; thus rescuing Democrats from what otherwise promises to be a very bad year. But no one anticipated the Rally to Restore Sanity or the March to Keep Fear Alive. Could the Comedy Central Duo make a difference? While the tea party crowd is overwhelmingly middle-aged the Stewart-Colbert fans are those younger potential voters co…
Read More…Fridays,” his “university,” and the recent rally in Washington. While Beck promotes Barton as a “professor,” the advertisements for this “free and open to the public” event called Barton is a “Constitutional Scholar.” Of course he is neither. But he is a key figure in American Protestant fundamentalism since the 1980s and, to a generation of Christian-schooled and homeschooled students, the authority on God’s role in American history. New polls sh…
Read More…not serve anyone’s interests. … In my tradition, Christianity, one of the central theological claims is that God extends love and mercy graciously—i.e., from a space of vulnerability, from a space where being wounded and hurt and misunderstood is always a risk. As we worked—and worked hard—through the course of the week, as we made mistakes, as we learned from each other, as we forged relationships, genuine relationships, by naming and confrontin…
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…us Concerns The Orthodox community’s reliance upon beth dins is one of the central stumbling blocks to combating sexual abuse. Typically comprised of three rabbis, they rule on family and business disputes such as divorce, inheritance, and contractual disagreements. Small Jewish communities usually have a single beth din while larger communities, like those found in New York and New Jersey, may have many. These include beth dins that specialize in…
Read More…according to the mosque logistics, except for this group that moves about freely between the separate sections. I also do not see the women going to the men’s side for anything. Now, I elaborated the possibilities for the men for a reason. If a man comes to the women’s side, this can only be for personal reasons. This is because the heart of the mosque and center of all mosque activity is on the men’s side. In addition to the larger male prayer h…
Read More…l conscience. The problems with women’s marginalization in some mosques is central in my mind and therefore often in this blog so I certainly agree with LW. We are making more women-friendly-mosques; even here in the west. I am happy about that and about those places with women-only mosques, including mu’adhan and imamahs, like China and India. Some countries have fewer restrictions, like Indonesia. It is so good to be in places like this because…
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…p Dolan, on the other hand, is a fighter for the orthodoxy that has become central to the Catholic Church since Dorothy Day’s death in 1980—sex and gender. In recent weeks, the two most influential Catholic magazines in the US, Commonweal, and America, have published articles about major crises currently facing the US Church. In America, Vincent Miller argues that Catholic social teaching on the obligation to care for the poor, as well as the esse…
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