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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…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…
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When representatives of The Episcopal Church gather in Baltimore for the denomination’s General Convention taking place from July 8-11, they’ll be asked to consider a proposed overhaul to the church’s sexual violence prevention policy. Currently, Episcopal canon law requires those preparing for ordination to demonstrate competencies in the “prevention of sexual misconduct.” The proposed changes would strike that requirement. Instead, ordinands wo…
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…eteronormative uncontracepted sex in monogamous marriage.” Sections 243 and 299 would also disappoint any divorced and remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion openly. Pope Francis says they should be treated with care and kindness and respect, but he stops short of giving them access to receiving Communion. He offers the same condescension to LGBT Catholics in Section 250 when he says should be treated with care, kindness and respect, bu…
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…Louisiana that fall outside the federal levee system. The seventh largest delta on the planet, these wetlands contain 37 percent of the marshland in the United States and the largest commercial fishery in the lower 48 states—to say nothing of the largest offshore oil production of any state. These wetlands are also the most endangered in the country, accounting for 90 percent of all coastal wetland loss in the lower 48 states. From 2004 to 2008 (…
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…aundiced eye these journalists who think that by the mere act of writing an 800 word op-ed they’re going to wave a wand over people of faith and make their beliefs go away. Not Happening. Yes, not every conservative Christian is a Dominionist, but to say a movement doesn’t exist, without even being able to say what it is in an op-ed is just irresponsible. It also shows what the real issue is. For the last 30 years, journalists have had an easy tim…
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…In the video, Scott explains at length to those in attendance about how to contact their state legislators in support of her bill. The video also reveals that the church was prepared to mail out letters to legislators produced in advance from those in attendance; the letters were reportedly available to sign after the service. On June 25, according to local reporter Nathan Brown, the Idaho state GOP adopted both the nullification of “federal court…
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…afni for years. The most serious allegation—repeated, nonconsensual sexual contact with a middle school-aged girl, when Gafni was 19 and 20—happened years before he became a New Age leader. (Gafni has said that the encounters were consensual, and that the girl was “14 going on 35”). Oppenheimer’s piece isn’t so much an exposé of a predator as it is a challenge to the communities at the intersection of the business world and practitioners of Integr…
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…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…
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No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…
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