Religion Dispatches
…, 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…
Read More…Pages about whether his clinic used the discredited practice. If I were a betting person, I’d bet this doesn’t have much impact on his wife’s campaign. While LGBT rights advocates and allies are right to be outraged, I doubt it would bring any new opposition to Bachmann, who is already well-known for her anti-gay views and voting record. And her supporters would likely not only support the use of ex-gay therapy, but view her husband as beleaguere…
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…this more dangerous than amusing. Sounds like we’re both walking the line between investing these quirky theologies with the humor that they seem to call for, and the sympathy and seriousness that endears them to us in the first place. So long as we upset everyone equally, we should be fine. Something has recently been irking me about the Eden narrative in the Bible that I want to run by you; Adam and Eve don’t actually seem all that upset about…
Read More…ngelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patriarchy here. While Christians traditionally hold that God is beyond gender (even while often using masculine language for God), in “The Tenets of Bib…
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…y leaders will select their presidential candidate next February. But most bets are already on Enrique Peña Nieto, the young and dapper outgoing governor of Mexico State, which surrounds the capital. In 2009, Peña Nieto led a delegation that journeyed to the Vatican to present the Pope with gifts from Mexico state. When he spoke about his upcoming plans to marry, Pope Benedict XVI blessed the governor and his fiancée, Angélica Rivera, a Mexican so…
Read More…doctrines and policies. But that doesn’t mean that he “gets religion” any better than the rest of us who report from the pews at the back of the worship hall, or from all of the unauthorized places—homes, schools, street corners, campuses, government—where religion wields major power. A few weeks ago, Mattingly criticized RD for running my story on a recently-installed, openly-gay Mormon congregational leader in San Francisco. Get Religion insist…
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…f? I think this book can go a long way to inform people about the tensions between democracy and social control in American history. And it can teach people a lot about how evangelical Protestant traditions have changed over time, including the ways they have reshaped strategies to engage the political realm. I’m afraid there are no pleasurable parts of this book. In fact, it’s really grim. People with relatively good intentions did bad things. Bu…
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…won’t restrict access to IVF at all. That is, it will somehow distinguish between murder and manslaughter, and protect frozen embryos from being discarded while continuing to permit embryos to be frozen (and die during the process) in the first place. Personally, I find the logical and scientific contradictions impossible to resolve. Nor has the pro-personhood campaign offered any better rationale than “IVF won’t be restricted, because we said so…
Read More…her to run for president just in time for his big announcement tonight. (I bet God says no) he also announced he has created a series of cartoon history lessons for America’s children. In a news release announcing his new company Learn Our History, Huckabee says, “America’s youth aren’t excited about our past because they’re being taught history in a way that minimizes what has made America a beacon of hope around the world for over 200 years. Ins…
Read More…ade most memorable by an aggressively wooden one-liner involving a $10,000 bet and Rick Perry, people who are kind of rooting for Mitt Romney (and kind of rooting is as good as he’s polling these days) are suggesting that candidate Romney should start talking about his Mormonism as a means of seeming, well, more human. All along, the conventional wisdom has been that Romney should avoid Mormonism, given the uncertainty it engenders in American vot…
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