Religion Dispatches
…ansion. The result? Harvard and CUNY researchers say the death toll from 25-state ‘opt-out’ may be as high as 17,100 annually; hundreds of thousands more will be harmed by depression, untreated diabetes, and skipping mammograms and pap smears. Who were the victims of these Republicans? Fast food workers, nursing aides, restaurant servers, child-care workers, and the hospitals that serve the poor, especially the black and hispanic poor. There are n…
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…serating on social media all the while, in the impossible hope that a woman-groping, dog-whistling ignoramus would not be our next president. When I woke up a few hours later, the news was the same. The unreal had become real—or perhaps more accurately, the real had finally become real to me. Life had to go on, so I dressed in my best mourning clothes and went through the motions to get to my 8:30 a.m. World Religions class. (Yes, I know “World Re…
Read More…ed out earlier, larger churches contain a higher proportion of people with high incomes, they are even more likely to attract the attention of politicians. In this fashion, mega-churches can both reflect the loosening of religious ties and prompt the rise of some churches’ social and political influence. Small churches might be able to exercise more influence over their members’ behavior, but the numbers favor the bigger outfits. It’s important to…
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…eligious leader Nimr al-Nimr took tensions between Riyadh and Teheran to a new high, a reader emailed me a deceptively ordinary question. It’s worth a second look, not only because it helps us get past the simple headlines—check out the front page of the New York Times today, suggesting the Iranian-Saudi rivalry is embedded in and involves all Sunni and Shia—but because this reader’s question inadvertently helps us understand why so many in the We…
Read More…ime pediatrician with one of the city’s eight health clinics that serve low-income patients, sued the city in 2013, claiming that it fired her for refusing to comply with an initiative to promote the use of emergency contraceptives and long-acting contraceptives in adolescent populations at high risk for unintended pregnancy. Fernandes, who is Catholic, told the city’s public health department that “participation is strictly forbidden by my religi…
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…fears. In Lord of the World, religion has been subsumed to a kind of hyper-rational communism, the professions have been nationalized, and euthanasia and suicide are legal. Worst of all, Esperanto is the official language of Britain. Julian Felsenburgh, a man of great charisma and linguistic ability, then rises from U.S. senator (from Vermont, no less) to President of the World. He encourages pogroms against Catholics and destroys Rome, which eve…
Read More…in the Constitution that only the religious practices of churches or church-related non-profits are entitled to accommodation? Justice Ginsburg has a response to the professor’s questions. Religious organizations, she argues in her Hobby Lobby dissent, “exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith,” whereas for-profit corporations do not. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not…
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…is struggle, and his martyrdom. And this rangy, rail-splitting Abe was down-to-earth in a way the alabaster Cincinnatus of Mt. Vernon could never be. We heard it said that Lincoln could tell a funny story; we later learned that he could also tell a bawdy story—and we liked him better on that account. To mark this week when Lincoln’s Birthday is celebrated, The New York Times Book Review splashed a sketch of the stovepiped Great One on its cover an…
Read More…1st century demand holistic thinking, multidisciplinary education and cross-cultural communications. These problems include: How do we develop the economy for a world of 9-10 billion people in 2050 without destroying the ecosystems and environments that make life possible? How do we discover the appropriate place for cultural differences in a multipolar, hypermodern world without resorting to fundamentalism, separatism, and ethnic violence? How do…
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…what we think of God—and of humans— must change. This is essential to the New Testament and “the very logic of Christian faith.” And, finally, the truest argument—not proof—for the divinity of Jesus is in the one undenied fact of this history: that billions upon billions of ordinary human beings have found in this faith an immediate and saving experience of the real presence of God, “partaking” of God—becoming God. Even unto here, with these word…
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