Religion Dispatches
…ghtly. There is no hiding here behind the idea of opposition to a specific site such as Ground Zero, or the need to be sensitive to the raw emotions of 9/11 families. Here is the underlying, perverted “logic” revealed in all its horrific glory. Like the woman in California, Fischer pretends to honor the principle while abandoning it: “Because of this subversive ideology, Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment….
Read More…sing page for the group Doctors Without Borders on the charitable donation site FirstGiving.com. Crymes, after encouraging members of the Christian group to donate to the atheists’ campaign, created her own FirstGiving page to support World Vision, which in turn gained support from Reddit’s atheist members. Another non-profit to wade into the battle between the do-gooders is Kiva, a capitalist organization that makes micro-loans to people trying t…
Read More
…lls, she had gone to a laundromat that, as it turned out, was formerly the site of the Wesleyan Chapel: the site of the “largest bestowal of democratic freedoms in the U.S.” Could one imagine, she asked, “a laundromat in Independence Hall?” Jenkins’ point is an incisive one. It is not simply whether we tell tales of the history of the women’s movement, but rather how we turn that history to the here and now. Martha Kelly notes a similar “present a…
Read More…ping equip Christians to know and understand the TRUTH.” “Caution,” the website warned in 2004, “the information contained on this web site may cause you to become dangerous!” The internet archive shows an amateurish site dedicated largely to attacks on evolution and encouraging students to question their teachers according to their “Christian worldview.” It touted “learning tools” on secular humanism, cosmic humanism, Marxist/Leninist ideology, e…
Read More…ntial Mormon involvement in other state LGBT equality battles. But his new site has nothing to do with redressing the damage from Proposition 8. It’s all about using the 2012 presidential campaign to make Mormons feel ashamed just for being Mormons. The site itself is flat and juvenile. It’s been denounced by the Los Angeles Times. (And it’s already been infiltrated by savvy Mormon folks and their allies.) But it participates in a mode of anti-Mor…
Read More
…d after a funeral and within 300 feet of the entrance or exit of a funeral site and within 500 feet of the border of a funeral site. As with the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2006, this law aims to prevent pickets by members of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, which links military deaths to America’s tolerance of homosexuality. According to Westboro Baptists, America toler…
Read More
…ness-plus-transmission. It can be accomplished remotely, or in person, the site explains. Patel said he didn’t want to “get too into it” here. Even a visit to Heartfulness’ website and social media pages doesn’t offer much more in the way of an explanation, only the guarantee that yogic transmission is “the essence of a good inner life that must be experienced to be appreciated.” USC, a world-renowned research university, seems to be an odd choice…
Read More
…e gay teens are encouraged to discuss their experiences of homophobia. The site still can be accessed outside Russia, but inside the country the site displays an October closure order. Xenia Loutchenko, a Moscow commentator who writes on church affairs, says Putin and an inner Orthodox circle are driving the air of social retrenchment, not any grass-roots desire for a sterner, more judgmental Russia. “There is a demand for an ideology, and they’re…
Read More
…tians. A longer version of the letter was published on the Army of God Web site. As recently as this past week, we saw the double standard in action. Scott Roeder (the man convicted of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas) was mostly described in the media as an anti-abortion extremist or anti-abortion militant, terms that fail to convey the depth and breadth of his views and the reasons for his crime. At his se…
Read More
…o respect Judith Butler’s arguments that gender is performative.) But, for official Vatican theologians, arguments about priestly ordination turn decisively on whether someone is “sexed” biologically as male, in the everyday sense of the term. No matter that women may possess a surfeit of the qualities of a nurturing leadership and a moral strength requisite for the priesthood. They can never qualify. What’s wrong with this picture? Never mind, fo…
Read More