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…
Read More
…c bishops and priests. Marriage opponents are also planning to converge on Mexico City later this month. On Sunday, pro-equality activists marched in response in Puebla and Mexico City, where they marched on the cathedral, demanding support for a secular state. Other activists have filed complaints against church officials for violating the law that regulates religious organizations. A recent poll that showed Mexicans split on marriage equality al…
Read More…which Francis only obliquely inserted himself into the politics of the US-Mexico border currently convulsing the presidential race, he slammed Donald Trump for his stance on the border in one of his inflight press conferences. “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said in answer to a reporter’s question about Trump’s wall-building promises. The comments came a day aft…
Read More
…m on ABC about a hardworking single mother. Born of Mexican parents in the United States, Rivera had a fan base that spanned the borders of this hemisphere. For many Latino/as she is the ultimate success story, having gained international acclaim while proudly maintaining her identity as a US-born Mexican. She was an advocate for victims of sexual abuse and the rights of single mothers. She spoke out against Arizona’s SB1070 as racist and unjust a…
Read More…ar of Hindu traditions. A few months after The Hindus was published in the United States, it was favorably reviewed in the New York Times. The award-winning Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra praised the work as “staggeringly comprehensive,” and noted that “it is impossible not to admire a book that strides so intrepidly into a polemical arena almost as treacherous as Israel-Arab relations. The book was published the following year in India and was cr…
Read More
…but to access for those already in the country to all the things that the United States has symbolized to both its citizens and those outside it, for at least a century.” The National Review, under the headline “On Immigration, Poetry Isn’t Policy, But Poetry Matters,” lamented that Miller hadn’t responded with feelings as well as facts. A nativist sacred narrative—one focusing on “compassion for struggling Americans trying to make their way in a…
Read More…these global gatherings of social conservatives and the first held in the United States. Conference sponsors and participants included many American religious conservative groups along with their counterparts from around the world. Among those honored at the conference was Theresa Okafor of Nigeria, who repeatedly defended African countries with laws criminalizing homosexuality. I covered the conference for People For the American Way’s Right Win…
Read More…tty safe to assume that a significant number of “Concerned Citizens of the United States” are Mormon. But so too are a significant number of undocumented immigrants living in the American West. As we’ve reported here at RD, the Church’s strongest growth over the last decade has been among Latino populations, and almost 4.5 million Mormons worldwide are Spanish-speaking. Economic downtimes and anti-immigrant outcry go hand-in-hand in American histo…
Read More…Obama’s National Catholic Outreach Coordinator] informing him of the three phone calls, requesting that he respond to my question: ‘I would like to know whether the Catholic National Advisory Council for Sen. Obama is still operative.’ He has not replied. Donohue’s statement continued: It would appear, then, that the group no longer exists. It is not hard to understand why. After being criticized by the Catholic League, Archbishop Joseph Naumann…
Read More
…the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that Googl…
Read More