Religion Dispatches
The Sunday New York Times‘s front-page story on Mitt Romney’s service as a Mormon lay pastoral leader is hands down the most humanizing profile of candidate Romney that I’ve yet seen. And it makes a substantial contribution towards improving a national conversation about Mormonism that continues to fixate on caricatures and pejoratives. (A week after Pastor Robert Jeffress went on a media-spree hurling the pejorative term “cult” at millions of Am…
Read More…ued by the government denying access to public service, including military service including SOGIE as criteria for human resource action refusing admission or expelling a person from any educational or training institution denying a person access to public or private medical and other health services open to general public. Sen. Risa Hontiveros, has a similar bill currently pending at the Senate. In 2015, the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus met in Quezon City…
Read More…rdination and a more equitable role for women in LDS Church leadership and service. Today, the global operations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are governed and directed by an all-male organizational chain of command. Mormon women may participate in some decision-making at the congregational level. But at all levels most forms of institutional power—from the power to shape the church’s global policies and finances to the powe…
Read More…late 1980s, federal officials sought to identify homosexuals in the public service and military who were seen as untrustworthy and at risk of blackmail by foreign powers. Those targeted were subject to interrogation, harassment and dismissal. Many quit rather than submit themselves, friends and family to such harassment. In 1989, Michelle Douglas was discharged from the military for being, as the regulation put it, “not advantageously employable d…
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…vited Ugandan evangelist Jackson Senyonga to preach at the mid-week prayer service at his church. During the service, which ended with a frenetic faith-healing—during which Senyonga laid hands on congregants, many of whom fell to the floor, quivering and speaking in tongues—Senyonga described, in great detail, how he converted a Ugandan witch doctor to Christianity. He went on to provide instruction on how to prevent the nearby Houston suburb, The…
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…2011 that there were wide-sweeping cuts across the nation to mental health services. Just recently, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) announced that New York governor Andrew Cuomo planned to close psychiatric services, including the planned 2017 closure of the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center in New Hampton. We should indeed be obsessed with ending gun violence; we should also be deeply concerned about how we as a society take c…
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…in the MSM) about the radical nature of the shift. In the past, the social service arms of religious bodies understood that if they wanted public money they would need to honor public law regarding the disposition of the money: i.e., provide the full range of mandated services on a universal basis. We used to say to objectors, “If you don’t like the mandate, don’t take the money.” Apparently such a commonsensical response is now insufficiently def…
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…way. Pope Francis will visit Lund, Sweden, on October 31 for an ecumenical service with Lutheran World Federation members to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Bishop Eidsvig said it was unlikely the same-sex marriage controversy would be mentioned during the one-day event, adding that he hoped the Pope would also include a meeting with Catholics. Catholic Church: LGBT-Affirming Catholics Respond to ‘Amoris Laetitia’ New Way…
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…its unapologetic focus on black women “Lemonade” is equal parts “testimony service” and Sunday morning worship. It celebrates beauty and resiliency, as any good, uplifting worship service in the African-American Christian tradition should do. But the visual album doesn’t shy away from the trials and pains experienced by those women who may not get a chance to speak or to lead on Sunday morning, but who testify about their lives on a Wednesday or F…
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…Attacks against women are often perpetrated against those who wear hijab. By presenting a faceless female figure reduced to her chosen form of veiling, the Times does absolutely no service to Muslim women and no service to readers who may want to learn more. Rest assured, dear reader, there are other ways to learn….
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