Religion Dispatches
…sopher-characters, may or may not amount to the right answers. Finding the code might give answers, but not faith. Faith exists only when there is still doubt; it is born and thrives with questions. What Lost is Finally About (no spoilers) Every time I have watched Lost over the past six seasons, John Donne’s seventeenth-century refrain has echoed in my head: “No man is an island, entire of itself/ every man is a piece of the continent, a part of…
Read More…s of the 67-member Congressional Constitution Caucus, whose mission “is to promote an American future that remains true to its revolutionary past.” On Monday they sent a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, requesting responses to “deep concerns” about a “dismissal agreement” in a lawsuit filed by the atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation, which sought to compel the IRS to enforce its own regulations prohibiting electioneering from t…
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…octrine but a fight for the soul of the church. Francis and his allies are promoting a vision of the church that’s much more live-and-let-live, repeatedly turning to the word “mercy” to describe how they view the application of doctrine to the actual lives of Catholics, guided by a sense of the larger mission of the church as spreading the Gospel, not enforcing laws. Conservatives, led by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the D…
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…That’s the point. The lashings are administered under Shariah law, a moral code dictated in the Quran that dates back the seventh century. Aceh’s modern-day whipping sessions are meant to play out as they did in ancient times — only with teenagers recording the beatings on their iPhones. In the 12th century, Aceh was among the first places of Asia to absorb Islam from seafaring Arabs. Today, the far-flung province remains proudly orthodox. It’s th…
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…nting a fourth installment. Other major studio efforts haven’t cracked the code for commercial success either: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earned a respectable $100 million, but cost an estimated $125 million to make. Son of God did okay at the box office, grossing $26.5 million its opening weekend, bolstered by support from American megachurch pastors including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. But ticket sales quickly faded. Independent studios have done…
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…Roman officials smiled on her. While variety is good, efforts like this to promote one way to be religious and eclipse go against the grain. Feminine Genius or Feminist Genius? A close look at the text leaves me disconcerted on three additional fronts. First, there is the essentialism. Women’s “feminine genius” is a patriarchal fiction. Yet, it is trotted out time and again by Pope Francis and those who would curry his favor. In this report, “comp…
Read More…der families and practices, comprehensive sexual education in schools, and promoting principles of gender equality. All those are claimed to be a result of imposed equality and de-naturalization. “Gender ideology” does not require additional explanations, for it essentially works as a threat: “Gender ideology preys on your children!” However, the concept of “gender ideology” has lately been criticized even from the theological circles; the hollow,…
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…es. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a big breakthrough for the pope to promote “responsible parenthood,” here’s Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the l…
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…mise is that the guard-inmate relationship is always violent, so there’s a code of conduct that is enforced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three other inmates in my cell, i…
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…a man and a woman: Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo reports that the text was promoted by conservative lawmakers with close ties to the Catholic Church, over fierce opposition from the governing Workers’ Party of President Dilma Rousseff and pro-LGBT activists who spent last week protesting outside parliament. The parliamentary showdown comes after the May 2013 decision by a Federal Court to effectively legalize gay marriage. Religious lawmakers told…
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