Religion Dispatches
…erstand why my date never showed up. Silly girl. … Unfortunately, this distrust of women’s words and the assumption that women do not know what they are talking about, no matter what their credentials or expertise or experience, are widespread in the literary establishment (though they are often coded as “reasoned critiques”). Having read the book and some of the reviews, I’m strongly inclined to give the point to Sentilles. Not because her book i…
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…eople who kill animals. Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold. I recently visited this New Age Stephen Co…
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…g classrooms and rituals of community life, on the courage and goodness of New Yorkers, and on the horrific event that has shaped a generation of American Muslim life. Hussein Rashid_________ September 11, 2001. The day I became Muslim. That’s a lie. I am now a Muslim. I was not always. America made me Muslim. I was born into a Muslim family. Like all good children of immigrants, I rebelled. By the time I was 16, I was a firm Marxist, rejecting…
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…of the planning commission in Antioch, California suggested letting the virus run its course to kill the weak, elderly and homeless in order to relieve health care and Social Security costs. These perspectives are not outliers. We’re in the grasp of the politics of death over whose lives can be sacrificed (just as Black Lives Matter protesters across the nation). It did not and does not have to be this way. There’s still time to choose solidarity…
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…an ex-evangelical, for describing evangelical teachings about sexuality to New York Times reporter Ruth Graham “in very negative terms as teaching women to hate their bodies as a source of temptation and teaching men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and morality [sic.].” Onishi also attracted the ire of Jim Daly, the successor of James Dobson as president of the notorious Focus on the Family. Daly contemptuously referred to Onishi as…
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…At The Advocate, Shawn Gaylord of Human Rights First responds to a recent New York Times article that suggested Americans advocacy for LGBT equality in Africa may have done more harm than good. Gaylord writes that “the challenge discussed in the article is real.” It’s something we advocates constantly consider and navigate as we work to protect the human rights of LGBT people, not only in Nigeria but in many other countries where the charge of Am…
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…per cables to start a necessary conversation.“ Contributors include former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges; Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State; Peter Laarman, head of Progressive Christians Uniting; Carlton Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (and a member of RD’s Advisory Council), Debra Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality…
Read More…urch’s problems that eluded his predecessors. Stephen Castle writes in the NewYork Times: The creation of a lighter and looser relationship among the churches might be enough to allow Canterbury to maintain relations with the Episcopal Church and, say, provinces in African countries, which have encouraged their governments to criminalize homosexuality…. If such an outcome were agreed upon, members of all the churches would be able to call themselv…
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…Despite a very recent concern about their endangerment, the systematic destruction of elephants is not a new phenomenon, however. Varieties—North African, Syrian, etc.—all went extinct at the hands of ancient humans far before the modern era. And the demand for ivory, whether for religious or spiritual or aesthetic reasons, doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In a history of millennia of the destruction of elephants, saving a few hundred s…
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…ssessed whether respondents believed the Bible “should be taken literally, word for word.” Consequently, the study did not assess how much of the indifference to taking action on climate change might derive from a host of other beliefs. Perhaps most important to consider is whether suspicion of scientists and scientific research may be spilling over from the creation-evolution debate (as Katharine Wilkinson found in her qualitative study of the ev…
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