Religion Dispatches
…oo is a major issue around the globe. How’s it working? Salon calls the campaign and its accompanying television adverts (running in Baton Rouge, Colorado City, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Tucson, and Minneapolis) “weird,” while suggesting that the ad campaign is actually a strategy to pave the way for Mitt Romney’s 2012 run. Unlikely. (And anyone who thinks Mormons are placing all their eggs in Mitt Romney’s bas…
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…ence). They function quite nicely without benefit of clergy and with broad participation by their members. There are many other house churches, unaffiliated parishes, even the occasional creative affiliated parish that are gathering places for postmodern Catholics. Many see ourselves as much in “catholic,” small-‘c’ terms, as part of widespread religiously motivated efforts to love and do justice, as we do in “Catholic” terms. Catholicism is chang…
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…s of hatred have given context and support for Tarrant’s act. Far from being a “lone wolf,” the perpetrator of the New Zealand massacre was not isolated. This terrible event was part of a sad, established pattern of xenophobic nationalism and white Christian terrorism that is as global as it is destructive….
Read More…that recent instances of police killing Black people are part of a larger pattern rather than separate, singular events. Perhaps the more surprising information in the survey comes when we focus on how white evangelical Protestants’ views compare to those of the other major religious demographics surveyed. In general terms, majorities of every major religious group—except white evangelicals—believe that Trump has “damaged the dignity of the presi…
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…reason—only fear and prejudice. The Catholic scare and the Jewish refugee panic parallel exaggerated fears over Muslim refugees and asylum-seekers who are fleeing war and persecution, and the Trump administration’s attempt to prevent them from entering the country on security grounds. While the threat is real, most U.S. terrorists are homegrown. According to a recent study of terrorism in the United States spanning four decades—a time during whic…
Read More…ntral role in supporting Jew hatred—will not suffice. We might ponder this paradox: How is it that Judaism is both the most admired major faith and the most reviled? Is there a a deep and dangerous sibling rivalry at work here—a weird resentment that lurks even in the hearts of those of us who think we’ve completely uprooted all traces of anti-Semitism from our consciousness? Further, in thinking about the resurgence of white nationalism, do we se…
Read More…t we didn’t know then was that we were up against criminal behavior—people participating in criminal behavior and ignoring criminal behavior.” As last week’s move by the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the abuse of children and young adults by Catholic clergy (and the subsequent cover-up by bishops) makes clear, Hunt was prescient. Given the ever-widening sexual abuse crisis in the Church, it can be difficult to find an inflecti…
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…re a thing of the past and that the church has moved into a new, more transparent future. But to paraphrase a classic mob movie, just when they think they’re out, they get pulled back in. First, it was Spotlight’s focus on the Boston-area abuse scandal that proved to be the tipping point for public awareness of widespread abusive priest-shuffling. It also reminded people of just how hard senior Vatican officials like Cardinal Bernard Law worked to…
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…f six other plaintiffs, including the anti-abortion group Priests for Life and two Catholic dioceses. And who is this Zubik that the opponents of the mandate are so eager to hide behind the habits of the Little Sisters? He is Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, whose diocese is challenging the accomondation. Apparently the Becket Fund isn’t too eager to remind anyone that it’s actually a bunch of old men who belong to one of the world’s most patriar…
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…ffered a concussion earlier in the week of his conversion. As moviegoers departed the particular showing of Woodlawn I viewed in Fort Worth, Texas, they were greeted with posters for coming attractions. The first I saw had a dapper Will Smith standing in profile in front of gleaming white football helmets, with his chin resting pensively in his hand. The words “based on a true story,” and “even legends need a hero” surrounded the title of the film…
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