Religion Dispatches
…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…
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…ion by joining other denominations or leaving Christianity altogether. The number of priests and nuns was at an all-time low even before the recent sexual scandals, and the number of self-identified Catholics world-wide keeps declining. Many of those who remain in the Church ignore standard doctrines and believe what they want. How many Catholics disobey Church rules? About as many as the angels dancing on a pinhead. Believers know that Jesus prom…
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…e Common Good, favors making abortion illegal, and only views reducing the number of abortions as an interim step toward that goal. It is hard to take seriously a movement that thinks they can dramatically reduce the number of abortions while largely ignoring or denying the issue of access to contraception—including emergency contraception. One understands that they feel their hands are tied by the official position of the Catholic church against…
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…the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Covid-19 in a Chinese lab to help a demonic caba…
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…l every need. You have preschool, you have a couple’s night, you have childcare, you have all this stuff that’s free and really hard to say ‘no’ to. CS: Sure. I like the way you emphasized that in the film, because I think it’s a really important American reality that many Europeans probably don’t grasp. Just, the extent to which it’s difficult for those who aren’t religious to get themselves plugged into a socially supportive community, which you…
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…for Life President Jeanne Mancini told the Times: I don’t think that these numbers are the most important. The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion. But either they have the numbers or they don’t. And if they don’t, maybe the media should take a hard look at how it covers a predictable, lightly attended act of agitprop which claims to represent hundreds of thousands of people…
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…seriously backfire. Vilify him too viciously and too personally without a carefully crafted patina of Christian charity and they risk being perceived by the flock as self-righteous. Haggard’s own spectacular self-destruction offers an important cautionary tale for those who traffic in intolerant fundamentalist morality when their own human frailties are revealed. Ignore him and the rules-based authoritarian cottage industry comes undone. The era…
Read More…th hate from politicians and religious leaders seeking political power and cheap popularity.” She and more than 130 volunteers then distributed the magazine across the country and into some unlikely hands, including to Uganda’s Parliament, president, and other politicians, as well as churches and media outlets. Nabagesera says Bombastic has been a “big hit,” allowing her to attract correspondents in every country across the African continent. She…
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…her, the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it is far from free. Inherent in Christianity—in the system of thought, not just its history—are empire and violence, Krieger argues, particularly a mode of subjugation and submission to servitude—and its lacerations—that renames abuse as saintliness. Of this she is dubio…
Read More…me. And I would be lying if I said I haven’t become at least somewhat more careful with what I say in the classroom since. Self-censorship is, I think, the way most LGBT Russians and their allies deal with the legal situation today. If it’s hard to find many instances of the anti-“propaganda” law being enforced in practice, everyone realizes that the potential is there. Those LGBT people who are publically out here show a heroic level of bravery….
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