Religion Dispatches
…ir if you can’t make it to Dallas, you can watch online starting at 7 p.m. Central. But if your kids really like candy, you can comfort yourself with the approach to Halloween taken by Mars Hill church, the authoritarian megachurch phenomenon associated with hipster homophobe Mark Driscoll that has spawned survivors’ blogs. In an article promoted by the church’s Resurgence ministry, Pastor Justin Holcomb says Halloween’s pagan origins have basical…
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…riend violated federal regulations regarding employee benefits by suddenly freezing Anusara, Inc.’s pension fund; and finally, Friend put his employees at legal risk by arranging for them to accept packages of marijuana for his personal use. In the last few months, four of Anusara’s most senior teachers—Christina Sell, Darren Rhodes, Elena Brower, and Amy Ippoliti—resigned one by one, citing “professional differences.” On February 12, two addition…
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…erarchical since each Catholic diocese operates independently. “There’s no central repository, even in the Vatican… where you can go and find a list of all the Catholic Church abuse files from around the world,” Clark said. “With the Mormon Church, everything that happens goes to Salt Lake.” The problem is those documents aren’t discoverable in court. The LDS Church maintains it does not keep records of child abuse. Plaintiff attorneys have been u…
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…n leaders to take action against the big book of law and lore that is both central to rabbinic Judaism and, according to Gregory, potentially offensive to all of Christendom. A group of French rabbis appeared in the book’s defense. The prosecutor, Nicholas Donin, who’d converted from Judaism to Christianity, had traveled to Rome in order to convince the Pope of the Talmud’s danger, with motives that remain unclear. Christian university scholars ma…
Read More…y, but evidently a lot of other people on Twitter) tune in at 10 Eastern/9 Central to watch episode 4 of Preachers’ Daughters on Lifetime. Didn’t catch it? Here’s what you missed. Last week, 16-year-old Kolby Koloff had broken off her relationship with Micah, amid her confusion over whether she was ready to date. This week’s episode begins with Kolby, immediately post-breakup, going to talk to her mother. It’s here that we start to see a more com…
Read More…is a concerted effort to dismantle our First Amendment rights and redefine freedom. As a result, elected leaders across the nation are realizing the importance of preserving religious freedom and are being proactive through legislative process.” The CPCF, which represents more than 60 members of Congress, claims to be “[a]larmed by the concerted effort to remove God from every vestige of government and to silence the voice of millions” and therefo…
Read More…e to write in a very different genre: memoir. Why? Interfaith work gives a central place to the idea of exchanging stories to create more understanding and enrich the quality of the conversations that take place between people in various communities. As I began to speak about and do work related to the intersection of atheist identity and interfaith dialogue, I drew a lot on my personal stories and began to recognize how my experiences shaped my c…
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…sts poorly with moderates, in favor of values like fairness, equality, and freedom. There is some overlap—after all, the Constitutional clause in question is about Equal Protection—but the deeper questions, we know, are not constitutional but religious: the fundamental dignity of each person; the relationship of tradition to science, conscience, and change; the meaning of religion itself. So is all of this public rhetoric hypocrisy? Some, but not…
Read More…rty’s intertwined relationship with the religious right. And six words, so central to the religious right’s messaging and mobilization, and thus imperative to a Republican presidential hopeful’s lexicon, do not appear at all in the report. Those words are Christian, religion, abortion, marriage, Jesus, and God. No Christian nation, no crucial role of faith in American public life, no shining city on the hill, no scourge of abortion, no need for pr…
Read More…torship—and outrage over the crimes committed during that period—remains a central part of the activist narrative in Argentina, heard widely at demonstrations in support of LGBT and reproductive rights. A common protest chant—“Iglesia. Basura. Vos sos la dicatura!” (Church. Garbage. You are the dictatorship!)—today became—“Bergoglio. Basura. Vos sos la dictadura.” Habemus Papam Franciscum! Check back (or sign up for the newsletter) for a more det…
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