Religion Dispatches
…d now requires a simple majority vote in the Senate, those who believe in civil rights, individual autonomy, and the equal balance of power in a democratic republic had better get our houses in order and find a better strategy for opposing the next great threat to our way of life….
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…isit the transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Beth-el: [Bet-is House] [el- is GOD] and the horns [trumpets] of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground. *When the trumpet fell off from Moroni on salt lake temple today.” While this sounded reasonable to many, the following day, several Latter-day Saint scholars of Hebrew had criticized the faulty reading of the passage and pointed out that horns referred to th…
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…, animal rights, and medical ethics, it will likely necessitate a dialogue between Muslim doctors, biologists, ethicists, and other authorities before most Muslim scholars arrive at an opinion on xenotransplantation. Even then, any judgment would be applied on a case-by-case basis, as Islamic jurisprudence doesn’t give blanket rulings on such delicate matters. As previously mentioned with Judaism, however, because the pig is not actually being co…
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…to tell it. Only the notion that clergy are qualitatively different (read: better) than lay people makes being stripped of such titles bothersome. Of course it is hard to get a prestigious church job like a diplomatic post if you aren’t ordained, but that hardly compares with facing your abusers in court. Wesolowski’s will be the first Vatican trial for sexual abuse, yet still no date has been announced. Can we really expect that young boys will b…
Read More…iscourse. Sure. He’s racist and sexist. I get that. Is this a problem? You bet! Does it make me cringe? Of course! But is it unfamiliar? Hell no! Racism and sexism are as American and foundational to our cultural make-up as democracy. Imus simply reflects America’s contradictions. What comes to mind for me is the greater problem: the perennial closeting of race and sex. Let’s all say this together: RACISM AND SEXISM EXIST AND ARE INTEGRAL PARTS OF…
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…gelicals sometimes claim they “hate religion, but love Jesus,” but you can bet the RFI wouldn’t therefore claim that evangelicals have no religious rights. Slide from a presentation used by the author in religious studies classes. So why isn’t The Satanic Temple a religion? The RFI doesn’t say. It’s implied they’re not a religion because they don’t believe in God. But in United States v. Seeger (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that belief in a Supr…
Read More…er have and they never will. The coming four years will see a widening gap between the people and their President on this fundamental issue. As Americans come to know how extreme his position is, the intensity of the struggle to protect these children will only increase…” – A Grave Mistake and an Abiding Hope, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life “The election results and the scandal of the Catholic vote only confirm that we are still suffering fr…
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…up; or in her case, not. I suspect that Judge Noonan was considered a safe bet to balance the pro-choice president: an eminence gris whose conservative Catholic bona fides are polished by his claim that a fetus is essentially a person from the time of conception. Regardless of his intentions, anti-choice people must have been deeply disappointed that he did not take one for the team. Despite his valiant if ineffective effort to link anti-abortion…
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…s likely to say the quiet part out loud, Hyde-Smith would have been a good bet. She joked about sitting in the front row at a public hanging during her campaign to win a senate seat in the state which had the highest number of recorded lynchings. The Christian Nationalist identity draws legitimacy from the motto foisted upon this country during the Civil War and the Red scare. Our government is legitimizing Christian Nationalism. It’s time we get…
Read More…Nevada, Ken Buck of Colorado, Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Joe Miller of Alaska, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware. You can bet that no matter how the numbers finally shake out in next month’s election, Barton and DeMint, and their views on “Judeo-Christian heritage” and “biblical law,” will continue to have allies in high places….
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