Religion Dispatches
…dismay turned to laughter when I saw immediately below Winters’ screed the code of conduct for comments on National Catholic Reporter. His post is a primer on violating NCR’s own rules for respectful conversation. Maybe someone at NCR can give him a much-needed tutorial. NCR Comment code: Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Use appropriate language. Avoid vulgarities and slurs. Keep to the point. Deliberat…
Read More…atican, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to issue a code for how Christians ought to evangelize. No word on how this code effects the use of Chick Tracts. A village in the Philippines celebrates its patron saint, John the Baptist, with a Mud People Festival. Reminds me of my weekend at Bonnaroo 2004. The Pope tweeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism…
Read More…al acts, while zina violations carry a penalty of 100 lashes. The criminal code also allows Islamic courts to dismiss charges against rape suspects who take an Islamic oath, sumpah dilaknat Allah, asserting their innocence – so long as the court determines there’s a lack of incriminating “other evidence.” Within days of Aceh’s bylaws coming into force, special Sharia police arrested two “suspected lesbians” – women aged 18 and 19 – who were spotte…
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…s fiftieth anniversary, the Pledge was incorporated into the National Flag Code. Ten years later, in the shadow of the Cold War, two weighty words, “under God,” were added. It has become the creed of the state religion, taught early and often to our children. The Very Revd Will H. Mebane, Jr., Interim Dean at St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Buffalo, NY, grew up in the South in a fairly conservative religious household. He encountered the Flag at…
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…entalists in the 1980s. He was searching for a middle ground. The Da Vinci Code, meanwhile, vilified the Catholic Church, but I show that it should better be understood as an attack on Protestantism, and particularly on the authority of the Bible. It was a woefully ill-informed attack on the Bible, but its target was the reliability of Scripture, which is far more important to fundamentalist Protestants than it is to Catholics. What are some of th…
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…ass as white in a one-drop-rule society. You can imagine Judaism suspended between two poles: between those identities that, like race, have an obligatory and heritable dimension, and those that, like Christianity or Islam, are generally understood, at least in our modern Western identity matrix, as matters of belief and conscience. What’s interesting is that anti-Semites consistently push Judaism toward the racial end of the pole. There’s a histo…
Read More…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…
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…imagery in “Lemonade” is about barely keeping one’s head above water after betrayal, heartbreak and pain. But it’s also about rebirth, renewal, restoration and baptism. There is stunning footage of a group of women in white dresses “wading in the water,” echoing the Christian tradition of baptism but also echoing the African-American ritual of escape from slavery by way of the water. Black women, like Harriet Tubman, were often critical in leading…
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…l persons without discrimination, to repeal all provisions of the Criminal Code that criminalize relations between consenting adults and to put in place an immediate moratorium on arrests on the basis of such laws,” the High Commissioner said. Amnesty International also sounded the alarm on Gambia this week, highlighting the detention and torture of eight people it says were arrested earlier this month: “These arrests took place amid an intensifyi…
Read More…omosexual agenda.” On Wednesday, World Vision’s U.S. board tucked its tail between its legs, called its decision a mistake, and reverted to its original policy “requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.” The board thanked Christians who objected to the decision and asked for their forgiveness. We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have cau…
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