Religion Dispatches
…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
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…ualism is bad. Also, he notes but offers no explanation for the decreasing number of marriages in many countries. I am glad to see that in Section 34 he understands this basic fact of contemporary western culture: The ideal of marriage, marked by a commitment to exclusivity and stability, is swept aside whenever it proves inconvenient or tiresome. The fear of loneliness and the desire for stability and fidelity exist side by side with a growing fe…
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…ne so, local observers are feeling the impact. “I have a firm grasp on the number of Heather Scott supporters in my district,” Abbott says, “and in two years, from roughly 2018 to 2020, her base has increased roughly from 3800 to 6000. That’s quite a jump, and it’s definitely correlated to new residents.” When asked where the new residents came from, Abbott explains, “We have an active community of American Redoubters who advertise our area in pub…
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…iamentary vote on marriage equality even though polls show strong majority support. Business leaders have been among vocal supporters of equality, and the Sydney Morning Herald reports that they have launched a new campaign, which came “in stark defiance of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s advice to ‘stick to their knitting’.” The initiative invites customers to order one of 250,000 specially-commissioned rings bearing the phrase “until we all…
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…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
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…overwhelmed by his own sexual energy” in order to justify their continued support. Ken Wilber himself told Oppenheimer that “Marc has a lot of Shakti”—or energy—adding “I don’t think he understood the impact it had on people.” Another Gafni collaborator, the HarperCollins editor Adam Bellow, explained that “Marc is a powerful receiver and transmitter” of erotic energy. Any kind of community can tolerate behaviors it should not, though a number of…
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…ning the concern of the movement and alienating some moderate civil rights supporters. Author of numerous works on American-American religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20 years. Nelson Bunker Hunt A Texas billionaire remembered mostly for his business exploits, Nelson Bunker…
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…didn’t practice celibacy, but like the rabbis, they refrained from sexual contact with their wives from time to time during which they were known as ‘Sons of Holiness,’ a term which reprises the original meaning of holy as ‘separate.’ Syrian Christian ‘Holy Ones’ might be married couples with their child-rearing days behind them who decided to forego physical intimacy as they prepared to enter their golden years. Similarly, young people might cho…
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…that they plan to visit their campuses, Higgins explains, and that initial contact often opens the door for a conversation between Soulforce and campus thought-leaders once the Equality bus arrives. But not always. “Through e-mail,” Higgins says, “we’ve had students [at other schools] say that they’ve watched us from the library window but they didn’t have the strength to come outside. That’s why sometimes we need to walk on campus even it means b…
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…that… We are grateful to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We’ve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believ…
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