Religion Dispatches
…rs forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedi…
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…ade with insufficient care, and that have inflicted unnecessary hurt and caused anger. I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments. I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and th…
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…idual objections may be instead rooted in personal politics. Hinduism, because of its diverse communities and pluralistic beliefs, would seem more split on the issue of genetic modification. Instead, Vasudha Narayanan found that because of food’s prominence in dharma texts, it is important to consider various Hindu rituals and traditions surrounding food—feasting and fasting among them—in determining if and when GM food is acceptable. Narayanan do…
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…entary school classrooms in the early 1990s to explain the horrors of drug use. We watched videos of teens jumping to their deaths through skyscraper windows. Officers described the moral tragedies attendant to marijuana and let us know that if anyone we knew used it, including our parents, we should turn them in. More than 30 years later I still recall those lessons; they are etched into my long-term memory. But that enculturation has a genealogy…
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…fairly specific set of institutions and political positions, is regularly used as code for “most of Islam.” And those who obsesses about Islamism often flirt with more bald-faced statements of Islamophobia. Critics of white supremacy and patriarchy, on the other hand, point out that these ideologies are pervasive in the culture at large. The blame casts a wide net, not in order to single out a minority group, but in order to implicate a culture t…
Read More…at weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, “We are not a…
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…ten by and for first-century Christians, a people under siege, the authors used allegory and coded language to convey a message of hope to believers and to protect authors from certain death at the hands of their oppressors. The author of Revelations suggests readers may not understand the severe trials and tribulations of their time, but reminds them that Jesus teaches in Christ all is well. Where Revelations was, “once seen as encouragement to h…
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…ons but, like the Bush Administration before it, the administration has refused because of Mugabe’s ongoing human rights abuses, including controlling the country’s diamond wealth by military force and violence, and repression of political opposition and free press. Legalizing Homosexuality Could “Bring a Curse” The EFZ/ACLJ pamphlet also calls for constitutional prohibitions on both abortion, by defining life as “beginning at conception,” and on…
Read More…twist themselves into knots to avoid admitting that the same argument was used to oppose interracial marriages—which it definitely was. Of course, modern “religious freedom” has been interpreted so broadly that it now covers all manner of sins. Are you a business owner who doesn’t want to employ trans people? Just say your faith doesn’t allow you to recognize your trans female employee as a woman, which means she’s violating the dress code when s…
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…Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States. These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envi…
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