Religion Dispatches
…f the more striking things about all of the ink that has been spilled over California’s now-infamous Proposition 8 (and its long legal aftermath) is the almost reflexive assumption on all sides that marriage, somehow, is a norm—a desirable norm. And so the argument swiftly becomes an argument about normalcy: about who is normal, and about who may be privileged to participate in normalizing social institutions like marriage. On the Constitutional s…
Read More…ther recent poll showed that support for marriage equality has grown among California Latinos—especially Catholic Latinos, who now support gay marriage by 57 percent. That finding correlates with a nationwide Gallup poll showing that overall, Catholics of all ethnicities (at 62 percent) are much more likely to agree that gay and lesbian relationships are “morally acceptable.” The Prop. 8 Report doesn’t just dump information and run, however. Fleis…
Read More…Research poll released last week showed, a majority of Latino Catholics in California support gay marriage, and a slim majority of white Catholics do. That’s not the case for Latino Protestants, though, who still oppose gay marriage at roughly the same rates as white evangelicals. (Candace has discussed here and here how different views on theology might explain that.) Grandin believes the movement of Latino evangelicals toward the religious right…
Read More…estimated 33% of all U.S. Latino households; 36% of all Latino Children in California live in single-parent households). Family solidarity is strong and even though children may not follow “traditional family values” as projected by the church and the US society, parents want to keep their children within the family. While the whole Latino Catholic/Protestant divide is interesting, does it mean that Latino Protestants are big players in how the is…
Read More…members to donate of their time and means, as did a similar letter read to California Mormon congregations in June 2008 at the beginning of the Proposition 8 campaign. Although billed as one element of a faith-based “Yes on 8” coalition, Mormon participation in the 2008 campaign has been viewed as decisive in the passage of the state’s same-sex marriage ban. About 750,000 Mormons live in California. The letter being read today in Argentina marks s…
Read More…hueller, who grew up an Iowa farmboy, began his ministry in Orange County, California, in 1955, convening his first services at the Orange Drive-in Theater. In 1957, Schueller invited pop psychologist Vincent Norman Peale to speak, minting the brand of accentuate-the-positive-preaching that propelled him to the heights of his success in the 1980s. In those years, they bussed Orange County public school kids like me on field trips to the Crystal Ca…
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…ve support from their parishes. Shirley Constantino Tan lives in Pacifica, California, with her partner Jaylynn Mercado, who is a US citizen, and their two teenage sons, both US citizens. Tan fled her native Philippines in 1991, seeking political asylum after her family was victimized by violence stemming from a family dispute over an inheritance; a cousin murdered her sister and mother and shot Tan in the head. Tan and Mercado have been together…
Read More…ademy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles and the Islamic Center of Southern California. The San Diego Jewish Journal calls it “the world’s first multi-religious graduate school.” Of course, Claremont is not alone. Hartford Seminary boasts the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, the country’s oldest center of its kind. A second imam training program is being launched by the once all-Christian Graduate Theological…
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…but when the oil blowout happened in Santa Barbara in 1969, politicians in California and Washington reacted by passing the National Environmental Protection Act and the California Environmental Quality Act. I was around in those times, had occasion to use these laws and other environmental regulations to protect American Indian sacred lands. We might have prayed, but it was not the only thing we did to hold corporations to account for rampant dev…
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…ook market—the second largest in the country, second only to cash-strapped California. In addition to rewriting the social studies’ standards, the board last year also made significant changes to the science curriculum, inserting language that raises questions about the validity of evolution and man-made climate change. Fundamentalist Christians on the board fought for and approved creationist and intelligent-design friendly language asking studen…
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