Religion Dispatches
…od. Foolishly, I did not take his national identification card and his car registration — I just asked him to open the trunk of his car. He opened it with pleasure, and was about to drive off, when Muhammad, one of my neighbors, recognized him. “Oh, hello. Wait a minute — aren’t you the police officer we saw here yesterday?” Bashfully, he replied, “Um, yes.” Muhammad responded, with all the righteousness evident in his voice, “So, no work for you…
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…an in-laws gave her a car, which had to be cleared at customs before local registration. Then we went to the farmers’ market, the flea markets, and the swap meet. She insists on using a baby carrier instead of a stroller. So I held her six-month-old while she pillaged through a sea of clothing. That’s a lot of holding, trust me. When we finally returned to her place, I was hungry, but I just could not take another moment of being so family-oriente…
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…il fraud. As the activities of ACORN have demonstrated, organizations that promote voter fraud have burrowed into every corner of our country. In Kansas, the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive.” I love the phrase, “burrowed into every corner of our country”—like it’s an alien invasion of bedbugs. But rather than address a real problem, Kobach is just using the issue to continue banging away at the demonization of those who d…
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…dopted the 1997 law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.” Promoted by the Orthodox Church and directed specifically against new religious movements, the law distinguished between the four traditional faiths—Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism—and non-traditional groups such as Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-Day Saints, and Hare Krishnas. In order to maintain legal status, churches had to prove that they had…
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…enix, Arizona. All told, five people were removed and had their conference registrations revoked, allegedly without formal explanation. All of those removed are affiliated with Faith in America (FIA), a progressive nonprofit dedicated to “[moving] the needle forward on LGBTQ equality in the pews and in our legislation.” Brandan Robertson, a 24-year-old bisexual cisgender man, and former SBC youth leader, told RD that he and a colleague had noticed…
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…. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.” We feel her exquisite pain: emotionally, yes, but also morally. The good guy with the gun is not so good. As for the bad guy with the gun, he wasn’t bad at all. He wasn’t even reaching for his weapon. Historically, the dueling ritual was widely tolerated in the American colonies. After the birth of our republic, the practice persisted, surviving well int…
Read More…rograms and services to help resurrect the dying church, including a voter registration program with the goal of registering every eligible voter in his congregation. Atkins claims to even “lick the envelope and stick on the stamp for them.“ Before you get bent out of shape about blurring lines separating church and state and how churches don’t deserve their tax exemption and they’re all just in it to establish a theocracy, though, consider this:…
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…esembles SoulCycle’s (“book a bike”). So does the layout of MNDFL’s online registration portal. Both SoulCycle and MNDFL project a happy-healthy-community vibe, merging the accept-all-comers language of a millennial church with the prices of an upscale nail salon. And the origin story is basically the same: two people with complementary expertise get together; while chatting, they wonder why a certain service isn’t available, and they hatch a busi…
Read More…nment, requested the dissolution of Shams, which had obtained its official registration only recently — on May 18. On Dec. 12, Shams had called for a demonstration outside parliament seeking recognition of the human rights of LGBT people, but the rally was banned by the government. The protest was also aimed at countering the statements of Ahmed Zarrouk and of member of parliament Abdellatif Mekki of the Islamist Ennahda party, who said that offic…
Read More…Even though they have registered their same-sex partnership at a household registration office, giving Hu the right to sign medical forms for his partner, they are still excluded from many social welfare benefits that are reserved for married heterosexual couples, Hu said. “We don’t have that much time to wait,” he said in a statement. In response, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) told CNA that the Executive Yuan will handle the issue in line…
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