Religion Dispatches
…). I can think of two powers that would have to be involved: Indonesia and Turkey. Indonesia, because it is the world’s largest Muslim democracy, and is far enough away to be presumed neutral. More important still is Turkey, the power in the region with the diplomatic skill and flexibility to handle this charge. If we ask ourselves, who else would the Egyptian people trust, we would find ourselves forced to admit that in the last week we have lost…
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…hey oppose the distribution of condoms in prisons on the grounds that this promotes homosexuality. Supported by the churches, the prison service promotes abstinence as its main prevention approach. Lithuania: Conservative manifesto calls LGBT movement tyrannical A coalition of religious and intellectual leaders released a manifesto that condemned the 2016 Baltic Pride celebration “as an attack on human nature and the public good that follows in th…
Read More…my life around like the football on the front lawn after the Thanksgiving turkey has been eaten. My “lifestyle” will be held up, scrutinized, questioned, and ultimately, condemned. Happy holidays, right? Well, this year, Maggie Gallagher over at the National Organization for Marriage has a great idea: instead of victimizing your gay or liberal family members, the anti-gay, conservative members of the family can be the victims this year! In her vi…
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…le ghetto, with the conservative religious Muslims in it, you know what I mean?—so that they don’t remain an eyesore. But what if other women start taking up hijabs and burqas? Women’s subjugation could be contagious. Well, then, maybe we could ship them all off to the nearest Muslim country—like Turkey, perhaps. Or then Turkey would vote to keep us out of the EU. A political-cultural observer or historian of Western societies might be permitted t…
Read More…. Even having iftar together was par for the course. He just got back from Turkey and went right into teaching a weeklong 8-hour-a-day intensive course. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, including to just invite them over for fast-breaking as I had intended. Then yesterday afternoon we were finally able to talk and created a rough ad hoc iftar plan between what was left in my fridge and what he picked up (some fried chicken from a fast food place…
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…alleged antipathy the Pope felt for Islam. He traveled to the Republic of Turkey some short months later precisely to mend those fences. No, the real focus of papal ire is Modernity itself, the whole vast edifice of Modernism. Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy is the next (and more aggressive) installment in the Catholic story of anti-Modern retrenchment, a reaction against the Liberal ethos of Vatican II. And this, I suggest, is precisely what is going…
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…was complete and my mother had begun making broth out of the Thanksgiving turkey bones, I returned to Washington, D.C., and gave notice at Sojourners, the Christian social justice organization where I’d worked for seven years. Two months later, I began the actual journey back home. Forsaking city life for a return to “the land” is hardly a new story. Around the time the sugar shack’s tough beams first had been roughly hewn, Henry David Thoreau pe…
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…er, more flattering style. The next morning, rupees in hand, I went to the Welcome Center. I had five minutes before our orientation session so when the registrar asked me to wait, I explained that I needed to get to my students. But he demurred, joining a tanned and tangle-haired young couple sitting at a computer. The three proceeded to navigate the check-in procedure. I counted to ten, which only increased my agitation: now I’d lost another ten…
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…n to bless the set, which seemed plagued by literal supernatural forces. A bonus featurette called Faith and Fear packaged with another Conjuring Universe film, The Nun, features Bryan D. Ouelette—an “autocephalous [i.e. self-appointed] eastern Orthodox/western Catholic bishop”—blessing the set of The Devil Made Me Do It before filming began in 2019. Ouellette tells the crew, “The cosmos doesn’t know the difference between fiction and non-fiction….
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…ry of how they got to America is really awesome. 10. Remember, the hymn says: “Let us oft speak kind words to each other,” not “let us oft call people we disagree with Hitler.” And finally, one bonus reason: 11. We’ve got the soothing tones of Elder Richard G. Scott. If that doesn’t lower your blood pressure, nothing will. Safe travels, and happy voting….
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