Religion Dispatches
…first Monday evening of my senior year plastering every dorm we could with fliers for the Islamic Center at NYU’s first event of the year. We slipped into the dorms we couldn’t get signed into, and posted hundreds of cheap notices printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. We’d invited a prominent imam to speak and ordered a delicious dinner, convinced that the perpetually elastic undergraduate stomach would be the gateway to the soul. The next morning, the World…
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…
Read More…bravery. The law that passed in June—which is, I think, best explained as cheap populist scapegoating—has served to activate and embolden widespread homophobia, which seems to me to have been previously often latent (the homophobia I encountered in Vladimir 10 years ago was none too aggressive). Phenomena like “Occupy Pedophilia” have appeared on the scene. Although it’s hard to say exactly how common anti-LGBT violence is in Russia, it should be…
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…uild a church in Colorado Springs than the rapid population boom fueled by cheap land that would lead to a new free market Christianity political power base in the Western United States. In less than a decade, Haggard built one of the most influential megachurches in the nation. Not Everybody Loves a Comeback Story Today, Haggard and his wife Gayle jet set nearly every weekend to speak at emergent churches across the nation with a well-worn script…
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…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…
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…to many megachurches, including the world’s largest congregation of nearly 800,000. But their reputation has been tarnished by recent corruption scandals. “For them, the anti-gay campaign is another way to maintain their political influence in this time of crisis,” Kim said. Anglican Communion: Nigerian head of conservative group celebrates ‘traditional’ Anglicans in U.S. Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, primate of Nigeria and chairman of the conservati…
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…whipping boy. Academics wrestle with the question of whether journalism reflects public opinion, shapes it or does a little of both. Insofar as religion influences attitudes about sexuality—which it does directly to the faithful and indirectly through cultural osmosis to many others—coverage of religious responses to AIDS offers provocative possibilities as well as ways to chart cultural change. In 1981, for example, few Americans would have take…
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…arge part of the Great Plains, restored wildlife and built a system of over 800 state and county parks. They electrified an entire region of the country, bringing what had been America’s “Third World” up to 20th century standards. They created works of art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, ran nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taught illiterate adults to read and wr…
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…most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging th…
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…best endowed financially, provide parsonages. But over time, an increasing number of clergy have made their own living arrangements. Churches found parsonages prohibitively expensive; congregants preferred to see their donations go toward services rather than clergy housing; and new religious ventures, especially the nondenominational and evangelical churches that began to flourish in the second half of the twentieth century, could not boast the h…
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