Religion Dispatches
…dismay turned to laughter when I saw immediately below Winters’ screed the code of conduct for comments on National Catholic Reporter. His post is a primer on violating NCR’s own rules for respectful conversation. Maybe someone at NCR can give him a much-needed tutorial. NCR Comment code: Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Use appropriate language. Avoid vulgarities and slurs. Keep to the point. Deliberat…
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…ed by the black freedom struggle. And yet it cannot be reduced simply to a code for broader sets of values for particular groups, because the use of Jesus—even a Jesus envisioned as white—destabilized white supremacy. When asked a question about Jesus’ race, Martin Luther King responded that Jesus was “no less significant because he was white,” suggesting both how his own unspoken and even unconscious imagery arose from the history related in this…
Read More…ssisted the Senate Finance Committee with an investigation of possible tax code violations by televangelists, Trinity has seen less media coverage, and hence fewer donations from the public, according to the letter. Trinity’s investigations for the Senate Finance Committee led the Committee to launch an investigation, in 2007, based on revelations that televangelists had used tax-exempt funds for luxury cars, private jets, mansions, and even plast…
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…the end of the day, the redaction that was passed omitted any distinction between “traditional” and “non-traditional” faiths, but it also omitted any mention of atheists. The Russian web and blogosphere has continued to discuss the potential need to protect the rights of atheists, but whether discussions about further revising Article 148 are ongoing among legislators is unclear. A new redaction does not seem likely to pass any time soon. How the…
Read More…ons with tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Those changes were set in motion after record amounts of campaign spending by (c)(4) groups in 2012, and tea party complaints that their applications for (c)(4) status were improperly denied for partisan reasons. Although Congressional Republicans tried to make a scandal of the application process, further congressional investigation showed both conservative and progr…
Read More…omosexual agenda.” On Wednesday, World Vision’s U.S. board tucked its tail between its legs, called its decision a mistake, and reverted to its original policy “requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.” The board thanked Christians who objected to the decision and asked for their forgiveness. We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have cau…
Read More…sing poster that generated outrage in Kazakhstan for portraying a gay kiss between Kazakh composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbayuly and Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Now politicians are calling for bans on homosexual “propaganda” and other legal restrictions, with one claiming that gay people can identified through “blood tests for degeneratism.” Tengrinews reports that Dauren Babamuratov, the 30-year old leader of a nationalist movement called Bolashak,…
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…entalists in the 1980s. He was searching for a middle ground. The Da Vinci Code, meanwhile, vilified the Catholic Church, but I show that it should better be understood as an attack on Protestantism, and particularly on the authority of the Bible. It was a woefully ill-informed attack on the Bible, but its target was the reliability of Scripture, which is far more important to fundamentalist Protestants than it is to Catholics. What are some of th…
Read More…ion as seen in last year’s rally against revising Article 972 of the Civil Code to change the term “man and woman” to “two parties” in the article concerning marriage and the term “father and mother” to “parents” in the Civil Code. Philippines: Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Passes Quezon City Council The city council of Quezon City unanimously approved an anti-discrimination ordinance this week, expanding a law from 2003 that banned anti-gay housi…
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…l persons without discrimination, to repeal all provisions of the Criminal Code that criminalize relations between consenting adults and to put in place an immediate moratorium on arrests on the basis of such laws,” the High Commissioner said. Amnesty International also sounded the alarm on Gambia this week, highlighting the detention and torture of eight people it says were arrested earlier this month: “These arrests took place amid an intensifyi…
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