Religion Dispatches
…tried on everything, including gifts from others. I’ve had to discard one pair of pants a gift from a friend in Indonesia, cause they are just too short on the waist and the leg (I am like a giant compared to the average Indonesian). Also those nifty dresses (or sacks) I bought there have a lining which is not cotton, and I looked closely at this yesterday because with temperatures over one hundred degrees, I might just cut the lining out at some…
Read More
…t fifty years of progress with regard to civil rights, economic equity, a fair immigration policy, and especially a woman’s right to choose,” said Linda Pinto of CORPUS, an organization that represents married Catholic priests. For many Catholics this rejection of bedrock Catholic values—and what it means for the country as a whole—is the source of much of the anxiety around the election of Trump. Steve Krueger, the head of Catholic Democrats, sai…
Read More
…edge issue. But even before John Paul, the U.S. bishops’ conference had, in 1976, meddled in electoral politics when they pronounced themselves “encouraged” by Gerald Ford’s abortion views while they were “disappointed” by Carter’s. The U.S. bishops’ conference nevertheless retained a significant center-left faction throughout the 1980s. These bishops continued to emphasize social justice concerns like the abuses of capitalism and militarism in Ce…
Read More
…hese outward steps. Tycho Brahe, a well-known Danish astronomer of the late 16th century, rejected Copernicanism not only because it contradicted the Aristotelian physics of his day, but because it increased the size of the universe by several orders of magnitude. In Brahe’s view, Copernicus’ Sun-centered model expanded the gap between Saturn (at the time the highest of the planets) and the sphere of the stars to outlandish proportions. God, he re…
Read More…ous left. It means we’re doing our job. And just in case anyone missed the number of religious progressive groups endorsing the rally, here’s a list culled from One Nation site. Their list of endorsers is pretty long, so I apologize if I missed somebody: Rainbow PUSH Coalition The Shalom Center Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Sikh Coalition The Religious Institute The Community Church of NY Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania C…
Read More
…ration of the size and growth of witchcraft, and a misreading of fantasy, fairy tale, and horror depictions of witches as reflecting real-world practice. Although these disturbing tendencies won’t be disappearing soon, there are some promising changes on the horizon. A small group of evangelical academics, including the noted scholar of new religions Gordon Melton, are calling for a more informed and sympathetic understanding of the broader Wester…
Read More…ration, and next generations from these two, i.e. new births. Over the next 100 years, leading up to September 11, 2001, all three of these avenues continued with only slight variations and abatements of immigration, because the laws changed three times. In the middle part of the 20th century, the largest influx of immigrant Muslims came. Now again we experience great restrictions on immigration (and not just against Muslims). The one constant in…
Read More
…y computer screen as news stories continued to appear about the suicides of 13-year-old Asher Brown, 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, 13-year-old Seth Walsh, and 19-year-old Raymond Chase. Today, it is very clear to me that profound sadness and stunned silence is no longer a suitable, appropriate, or adequate response. From Lamentation to Indignation My sadness began to change into something different with each successive news story about another gay t…
Read More…during the performance. The black mass was cancelled at the last minute as 1500 protesting Catholics held a Eucharistic procession down Massachusetts Avenue. Some observers opined that this cancellation represented a defeat for the values of religious tolerance and pluralism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay marriage and…
Read More
…the Bakkers flaunted their wealth. Bakker raised about $158 million between 1984 and 1987 from his “lifetime partners,” but still managed to leave the ministry teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when the scandal broke. But there was more to it than just big hair and money. Before PTL could become a front-page scandal it had to have an outsized presence in American culture. That largely happened through innovation, including the Christian televisi…
Read More