Religion Dispatches
…urgical, financial, and administrative decisions are made by an exclusively-male chain of command. “I have heard from many women, ‘I see nothing wrong with the status quo. I feel equal,’” said Ordain Women founder Kate Kelly to a pre-demonstration gathering in a downtown Salt Lake City park. “To them I say: you can feel respected, supported and validated in the church, but equality can be measured. Equality is not a feeling. In our church men and…
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…ing on a range of issues related to sexual life—such as birth control, “out-of-wedlock” births, abortion, homosexuality, and even sexual assault—the US media overwhelmingly quote the most conservative religious perspectives as the moral position on an issue. This means that conservative Christians, usually evangelical or Catholic, get the most airtime. Is it any wonder, then, that many LGBT people and feminists identify religion as “the enemy”? Bl…
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…rch today. The pictures aren’t of Trayvon Martin, but rather of the two-and-a-half-year-old son of the Reverend Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, who posted this on Facebook in the aftermath of the verdict: The Zimmerman verdict won’t keep me up at night. I get it: “not guilty” doesn’t equal “innocent.” What keeps me up at night is being the mother of a son who is lauded by strangers as “cute” at 2.5 years but by in just over a decade may be perceived…
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…awa’i,’ or remainders. Back from when most Spaniards spoke Arabic. 19. FOX News “FOX News” by Summer Putman Because what else would they talk about? 20. Band practice The Ottomans invented military parades, and attached military bands (with drums over horns) to battle formations, to boost troop morale and freak out whoever was being attacked. They attacked often, which was not cool. But pretty soon everyone who was anyone was doing it, and then it…
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…the airtime their knowledge warrants, we will continue be offered the same-old-same-old uninformed “information” on religion and violence. If, finally, the media persist, in effect, in giving up understanding religion and violence by labeling the Boston Marathon attacks and their ilk the work of crazies and “misfits,” how will we overcome our fears? If our news providers continue to be governed by taboos against talking and thinking about religio…
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…love and compassion, and it’s easy to dismiss him as a megalomaniac with a new self-pornographizing book to sell every six months. But the string of replies to the tweet, as well as a number of pained blog posts, make clear that Driscoll’s rhetoric is at least as alienating to thoughtful Christians across the ideological spectrum as it is titillating to his followers. For those Christians often straining to sustain their identification and affilia…
Read More…losive the pants thing has been. It has been covered by all the television news networks in Salt Lake City, by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Associated Press, and the feminist blogosphere. Within the world of Mormonism, it has struck a nerve in positive and negative ways. There have been some incredibly nasty comments online and personal messages to organizers. I’ve been thinking about why the reaction is so negative, and it clearly comes from a plac…
Read More…on social networks thundered with status updates and tweets from 18- and 19-year-old women declaring their intent to serve. Some reported immediately calling their local bishops to set the missionary application process in motion. Brigham Young University’s newspaper The Daily Universe reported shouts of excitement and tears of joy among the 18- and 19-year-old men and women students watching General Conference in university dormitories. Missiona…
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…t good Irish Catholics followed their faith in the direction of inclusion, compassion, equality, justice, and a host of other Catholic values when they voted with the majority despite some clergymen’s efforts to lead them astray. The hard sell for “no” from a group of bishops was all but ignored. Some clergy were public about their “yes” vote, and my guess is that more than a few gay priests (and some straight ones, too) voted for their own self-i…
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…e added. “You don’t want people to think you are going to be everyone’s end-all be-all. What we are do is providing a new vision of freedom for all, an idea of what life could be. Our little organization can’t do everything, but we can create a new model.” And according the Cullors, the “healing justice networks” are growing. Groups are being founded, such as Harriet’s Apothecary in New York, Social Transformation Project and Black Organizing for…
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