Religion Dispatches
…Author’s note: Afghan-led organizations to follow and support include Enabled Children’s Initiative and Art Lords, and the news agencies Ariana News, EtilaatRoz, Pajhwok News Agency, Tolo News, including the women-led Sahar Speaks and Rukhshana Media. This is not an exhaustive list….
Read More…who has relativized all religious formalities in order to bring us into a new humanity starting from the rejected and precarious. PinkNews reports that the first World Congress of Homosexual Catholics’ Associations will be held in Portugal next week, bringing together 28 associations from 16 countries who will call on Pope Francis to make the church more inclusive. According to Portugal News Online, the meeting has been timed to coincide with the…
Read More…hts being stripped from recently passed civil unions legislation. In other news, the Rovereto labor court ruled that a Catholic school in Trento discriminated against a teacher whose contract was not renewed after she refused to discuss her sexual orientation when the mother superior asked about rumors that she was living with another woman. Mexico: Marriage equality reaching another state On Monday, Morelos will become the tenth of Mexico’s 31 st…
Read More
…e leaders and members of these groups who were striving to remake the landscape of possibility for black flourishing. These were flamboyant, performative movements in which people took spiritual names, adopted new styles of dress and food practices, and ordered their families and communities in ways that sometimes chafed against social conventions. There’s a lot of playfulness on their part, mixed in with their serious work, and I hope I conveyed…
Read More
…are legion: the New International Version (NIV) was published in 1978, the New King James Version (NKJV) in 1979, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJV) in 1985, and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) in 1989. There is even a periodical version published in the teen magazines, “Revolve” and “Refuel,” called the New Century Bible (NCV), a version popular among evangelical publishing houses and intended to translate “thought for thought rather than word…
Read More…nts, was founded by C. Peter Wagner, was in my view a marketing ploy for a new kind of Pentecostalism. The ideas aren’t new; the marketing strategy perhaps is. As Anthea Butler wrote in these pages in 2009: The NAR roots are also firmly within the boundaries of the historic Pentecostal movement. Foundational to NAR beliefs are spiritual warfare and dominion over social ills. These beliefs were influenced in part by two English authors, Smith Wiggl…
Read More
…res, I know I am cleansed. I know I am a new creation. I know my mind is renewed.” Haggard’s new role makes some of his fellow travelers very unhappy. H.B. London, the dour head of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, denounced the prayer services in the press, in a widely-circulated email, and on his blog. London reportedly told the Religious News Service of Haggard’s plans to hold prayer services, “When you think of the ethics of that, it…
Read More
…f time some white congregations lived out a radical welcome by joining the New Sanctuary Movement—sheltering individual immigrant families from deportation—but these gestures were so little reported and remained so incomprehensible to most on the outside that they barely made a dent in the wider public consciousness. In addition, New Sanctuary’s focus was mainly on hospitality for immigrants who are here without documents; it did little to help th…
Read More
…rt’s decision allowed marriage equality to become the law of the land in a new swath of states. Stuart Milk of the Harvey Milk Foundation, which promotes LGBT equality globally, said the advance of marriage equality in the U.S. also sends a message abroad, making Monday a good day for global human rights. The Russian government has kept up its demands that the U.S. return a gay teenager who is seeking asylum in the U.S. after coming to the country…
Read More
…gs.” China: Some parents unhappy with new inclusive sex ed curriculum Pink News reports on a new and “surprisingly inclusive” sex education curriculum that addresses issues from sexual intercourse to LGBT identity in a matter-of fact way: “A minority of people experience attraction to members of the same sex,” reads one section. But the textbook does not only define sexual orientations as gay or straight, it points out that people are bisexual too…
Read More