Religion Dispatches
…passed the “Ryan Budget” I’m thrilled, personally, that it’s Ryan. The GOP ticket is now led by two unbelievably privileged and self-important white guys (are Billionaires for Bush still around to gin up Rapacious for Romney material?), but it’s even better than that. The Ryan Budget is such a gift to the Democrats that one might think the Angel of Moroni had dropped into their laps. Unlike Romney, Ryan is anything but a cipher in respect to concr…
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…oommate over a period of months in 1970. Although I can’t find an official number, a casino employee tells us over 5,000 tickets have been sold; 5,000 pilgrims who’ve made the trek from around the country to pay their respects to Annabelle, and are willing to wait hours to do so. On the convention floor, an eclectic group of vendors hocks their wares, from Ouija boards and books about ghost hunting to bath bombs shaped like horror movie icons. The…
Read More…sday, to every registered Republican or non-aligned Iowa voter with a cell phone on record. . . . The video’s star is Molotov Mitchell, whom Cary K. Gordon, president of PeaceMakers Institute and pastor of Sioux City’s Cornerstone Church, calls “the guerilla warrior of Judeo-Christian political commentary.” Mitchell is an edgy independent filmmaker whose Illuminati Pictures delivers something akin to an animated political cartoon weekly at WorldN…
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…and nuns, Christian and otherwise, live in monasteries and convents; and a number of historic Protestant churches, especially those 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…
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…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…
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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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…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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…s,” 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 conservative GAFCON Primates Council, published an open letter in which he celebrated having attended the recent General Assembly of the Anglican Church of North America, the group that split from the Episcopal Church over the role of women and LGBT people in the church. H…
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…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…
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