Religion Dispatches
…ious believers—a striking shift from the hard-hitting argumentation of the New Atheist movement—and ends up humanizing atheism while he’s at it. New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and so on—have been all about the polemic. But you chose 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 con…
Read More…d the 2008 election; as I’ve argued before, he gained support across the a number of demographic groups, and it’s difficult to make the case that Obama won because he finally shed the Democrats’ (imagined) hostility to religion. If you’re a religious person whose faith compels you to favor government programs to support the less economically blessed among us, pulling the lever for McCain-Palin probably wasn’t in the cards. To add insult to injury…
Read More…aception. So is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s th…
Read More
…about Packard’s idea for a new kind of kids’ book. Packard, a lawyer from New York City, spent the end of the 1970s trying to get publishers to show some interest in his book. By his account, he had grown lazy while making up a rambling, multi-part bedtime story for his children. When he began to ask them what they wanted the character, a shipwrecked boy named Pete, to do, it occurred to him this would be an interesting idea for a book. Packard w…
Read More
…ces on a bloated bureaucracy. Those could be redirected to feed, clothe, and shelter people with plenty left over for structural change work on a global scale. To do so would bring about a new Pentecost and open a new chapter in catholic (lowercase “c”) history. Go for it, Francis. There is nothing to lose and a world of good to be gained….
Read More
…ing yoga lest they become Hindu. (I wrote about his warnings here). When a New York Times front-page article brought to mainstream attention the Hindu American Foundation’s “Take Back Yoga” campaign designed to raise awareness of yoga’s so-called Hindu origins, Mohler interpreted it as a “vindication” of his own position on yoga. This move was possible since, as it turned out, Mohler and the Hindu American Foundation shared an essentializing visio…
Read More…ted partners of U.S. citizens who are gay or lesbian, is compiling a large number of religious leaders, organizations, and denominations, to sign on to a letter supporting the legislation. As I reported last year, UAFA would correct a glaring inequality in our current immigration law: there are 36,000 bi-national couples in the United States—same-sex couples in which one is a US citizen and the other faces possible deportation if a partner or spo…
Read More…f dozen states have vowed to investigate the Church, and, according to the New York Times, “Pope Francis has summoned bishops from around the world to Rome for an unprecedented meeting focused on protecting minors.” It’s a good start. In addition, despite the cries of apologists, we must continue to demand robust laws that expose predators and hold the Church accountable for the cover-up and encourage law enforcement to do everything possible to e…
Read More…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…
Read More
…made headlines recently after its local presbyteries voted to, as the New York Times put it, approve same-sex marriage. This new definition will go into effect in June. Given the tensions this issue has caused, both within the PCUSA and among many other denominations, it shouldn’t be very surprising that the phrasing in the PCUSA’s Book of Order was changed from “between a man and a woman” to “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”…
Read More