Religion Dispatches
…support. A Web site devoted to Freshwater’s cause is called www.bibleonthedesk.com. But Dennis said the issue was never about the Bible on the desk. And nowhere in the lawsuit’s initial complaint is it even mentioned. Rather, she says, it’s because her son was branded. After Freshwater took his side public, Jenifer said she and her husband were worried Freshwater wouldn’t face disciplinary action. In June, they filed a lawsuit against Freshwater…
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…those victims who did report their victimization to Episcopal leaders, the number one assessment from both trans/non-binary and cisgender respondents was that “little or no change” came about as a result. 20.6% of transgender and non-binary survivors reported that they simply left the church altogether. By comparison, “only” 10.7% of cisgender women felt they had to leave. (Curiously, there’s no data on this front for LGB-identified Episcopalians….
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…ther and a mother, without which a child is just a “plaything.” In Sections 179 and 180, Francis praises the generosity of couples who adopt children, but he refuses to include same-sex couples in that praise. For those waiting to hear what he has to say about the headline issue of divorced and remarried Catholics being barred from receiving Communion, he begins to “go there” when he condemns those who are judgmental and divisive, saying in Sectio…
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…nd signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians” (Article 12), the Act of 1877 was not a treaty but simply an Act of Congress illegally abrogating the promises made nine years earlier. The various bands of the Lakota have fought the theft of the Black Hills since they were run out by miners and soldiers of the US Army. Finally in the 1920s, a case was filed with the Indian Court of Claims, but it wasn’t until 1980 that the Supre…
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…and affirms the stained-glass ceiling on the pastoral role of women: “the reservation of the priesthood to males … is not a question open to discussion” (#103). Francis further worried that a discussion on women’s ordination “can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general”—as if the “reservation of the priesthood to males” had nothing whatsoever to do “with power in general” (#104). Evangelii Ga…
Read MoreFirst, Glenn Beck goes off the conservative reservation by declaring that same-sex marriage is no threat to America by saying: “I believe that Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If it neither breaks my leg or picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?’” Then, the notoriously homophobic Ann Coulter gets booked to headline next month’s “Homocon,” an event put on by GOProud, a group of gay Republicans. Coulter’s willingness to talk to gay Republicans got Wo…
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…she recalled. Such an environment left her with a deep sense of shame. “By 12, 13, I knew that this was not the place for me, but I felt very connected to spirit. So the question became, what is the place for me?” she said. She turned to her great-grandmother, who is from the Choctaw and Blackfoot tribes, and talked to her about her great-grandfather, a medicine man. Her interest in indigenous spirituality led to Ifà. For Cullors, spirituality sa…
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…ples were good for business. He opened his restaurant in Hapeville, Ga., in 1946. By 2013, Chick-fil-A had 1,800 locations across the U.S. and annual sales of $5 million. The company gave away $68 million over the years and was celebrated by the religious right. “The Bible tells a lot about how to run a business if we just read it and apply it,”Cathy said. He died at 94. David Eugene Sorenson An elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sa…
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…to mass in any given week and there were nearly 60,000 Catholic priests and 135,000 nuns, with the nation’s 18,800 parishes boasting an average of two priests each. The sacraments were still a major part of most Catholics’ lives: there were nearly 1 million baptisms and 350,000 Catholic marriages. The controversy over Humanae Vitae ten years earlier had largely subsided; most Catholics used birth control and most priests ignored the issue. The Cat…
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…nal beliefs and practices about the “spirit world”—ancestors, curses, evil spirits, nature spirits, witch familiars, etc.—undergo a translation into the biblical categories of “evil spirits” and “demons.” There is, therefore, continuity and discontinuity in the belief in the “spirit world”; continuity, because the “spirit world” isn’t dismissed; discontinuity, because there’s now no need to fear these “evil forces” which can be defeated with the h…
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