Religion Dispatches
…ork, and they have the potential to do even more. I have no doubt that many consultants and stakeholders wrestled with all the issues I’ve spotted here, and many more, and that this reflects their sincere best efforts to balance multiple constituencies and interests, many of which are at odds with one another. It’s just too bad that, to me at least, what they came up with reflects that….
Read More…faith needs to be out in the world – challenged by the things they see, broken-hearted by the world’s suffering, reaching out to those who are in need, no matter how their beliefs may differ. Cutting ourselves off from the world in the “Best Christian Workplaces” where we can never be challenged only serves to further divide an already partisan world. Anywhere can be the “Best Christian Workplace” – so long as it is a place where our deepest passi…
Read More…oc way, if you think about it). A perfectly fair question is whether it is best to imagine health care as the kind of thing best handled in a centralized or de-centralizedway. But to ask, and then answer, that question fairly, we need to jettison the old rhetorical saws about socialist medicine, government takeovers and death panels. Let the dead bury their dead. There is another question lying behind these questions, and I continue to wonder if m…
Read More…bstinence only education—the primacy of waiting until marriage. Nor did it promote a “virginity pledge” through which teens are asked to pledge to God and each other to remain celibate until their wedding night. In short, when religious trappings, and moralizing lectures are laid aside and young people are encouraged to think through the consequences of having sex (mainly unprotected sex), and are given the tools on how to have safe sex when they…
Read More…haviors that were chosen, by the way. I figure if these are some of God’s “best” and gay and lesbian people are not, perhaps it’s simply because we have a higher standard of morality than God’s “best.” Indeed, I think the LGBT community has far more courage than Osteen, who simply wants to “stay in my lane” and preach the feel-good gospel that keeps the money rolling in. What makes God’s “best,” Joel, is not someone who hides behind a happy gosp…
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…at alternative title would you give the book? Are Diamonds Always a Girl’s Best Friend? Myths of Sex and Jewelry How do you feel about the cover? I love the cover, the way the designer cropped the Ingres painting to make it more mysterious and suggestive. The Indian edition also has a lovely cover, a painting by Raja Ravi Varma of an Indian woman covered in jewelry and smiling seductively. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which…
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…e strings of his electric bass to bang out a rhythm that sounds like Morse code. When all twelve performers are on stage, the sounds that they make together are nothing less than astonishing. On top of it all rests the falsetto voice of the band’s vocalist, Jón Birgisson, who sings the lyrics with a keening wail: Bakvio sk´yjaból vaknar sól úr dvala Svalar sér vio kalda dropa regnsins leikur sér vio heita loga eldsins Byr til regnboga A rough tran…
Read More…it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, the idea, hang on, am I advising people to leave their church… yes!… If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.” And the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good responded. Beck needs to get out more. I don’t know about the Book of Mormon, but here are just a few of the Bible verses concerning the poor and believer’s…
Read More…ligious freedom. In the terms of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, these corporations are called “churches,” their “integrated auxiliaries,” and “conventions or associations of churches,” where churches are defined as a “subset of IRC 501(c)(3) organizations organized and operated for religious purposes.” Necessarily, such entities are artificial or fictive persons under the law, subjects capable of claiming rights and bearing respon…
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…—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The kabbalistic literature now so popular in modern Israel is in many ways worse. We have evidence that in the heyday of Safed in the sixteenth century a “council for rectifying sins” (va’ad le tikun avonot) was established to seek out and corporally punish those who wer…
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