Religion Dispatches
…e requires some creativity and thoughtfulness; marking the appearance of a new decade, or a new century, proves to be far more challenging than remembering to change the year on the checks and Thank You notes I write in January. This time around, there’s no escaping the fact that our collective feet are now planted firmly in the twenty-first century. And it is worth reflecting on what this dawning perspective (of seeing ourselves as twenty-first…
Read More…ry to slow the momentum. All Africa has reported that Museveni will back a new version: “According to MPs backing a new version of the bill, the law will be watered down and focused on the threat of supposed homosexual recruitment of children.” Medard Bitekyerezo, an MP supporting the law, said it would not “harass” consenting adults. A Catholic Bishop said people frustrated by the Constitutional Court’s action “should not take the laws into their…
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…of Faith to challenge the City’s policy, and the court proceedings began anew. The Good News Club decision created a new legal theory for opponents of church-state separation. The Court held that religion is nothing but speech from a certain point of view, and therefore all religious activities are protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. “When Milford denied the Good News Club access… on the grounds that the club was religious…
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…, does not believe that the Hills knew what they saw. In doing so he reproduces the dynamic of the skeptical expert who, he argues, led the Hills to become spiritual seekers in the first place. In the culture of new age spirituality they found a new place to feel at home after their rejection by the establishment. Yet even in this careful retelling, they remain outside the boundary of legitimate knowledge….
Read More…rds” against gays, and the time has come to respond. Referring to the 1969 New York riots that became a milestone in the American gay rights movement, he said, “The church needs a Stonewall.” Hong Kong: Catholic Bishop Defends Cardinal, Compares Homosexuality to Drug Abuse Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, defending a political letter from Cardinal John Tong opposing marriage equality and anti-discrimination pr…
Read MoreEvolutionary geneticist and ordained Dominican priest Francis Ayala has been honored with the Templeton prize. The $1.6 million award goes to those grappling with the answers to “life’s biggest questions” and to a living person who has made an “exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” “Science and religion are two pillars on which American society rests,” said Ayala, a professor of biology and philosophy at the Universit…
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…or their ticket to heaven, thank you very much. Tetzel would be proud of a new Web site, Information Age Prayer, which is now selling daily prayers: Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget. For a mere $3.95 per month (or a paltry $43.45 per y…
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…,” the monk said quietly. One of my students had stopped the brown-cloaked Dominican as he strode across the plaza of the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. We had just been reenacting Galileo’s trial just feet from where some of this monk’s brethren had presided over it around 380 years ago. My student wanted to know what this 21st-century monk thought about the whole thing. Just this summer, Florence reopened its history of science m…
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…rch in Santiago. Under Raul, the government has publicly taken measures to promote openness—doubling the page count of Cuba’s main newspaper, publicizing reports of corruption in state-run businesses, organizing employee gatherings for Cubans to discuss problems and inefficiencies in the workplace—yet many Cubans complain of a controlled social stagnation which has gone largely unaltered for decades. While the nation’s future is still unknown, in…
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…Greenberg of the ESPN sports talk show Mike and Mike also objected to the new production, arguing that it should not be performed. “They don’t rewrite history books,” he fumed. Despite spewing such vitriol, detractors maintained that their opposition to McDonald’s Mother Abbess was not driven by racial bigotry but instead by a desire for “accurate” history. One commenter, Will506, went so far as to write, “Audra McDonald did not belong in the Sou…
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