Religion Dispatches
…en rough contemporaries like Toni Morrison and Cornel West, to this august list of American spiritualists-in-letters—was ultimately a psalmist of the human spirit. He was, as we would now say, “spiritual (or sacred), not religious.” But then, in his judgment, that’s what democracy is all about. The very coin of the democratic realm is “sacred.” Whitman saw the work of fostering such a “religious democracy” as the work of the 20th century, and tha…
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…raceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talento, who is now a White House domestic policy aide, has warned of the (false) health risks of oral and other hormonal contraceptives, charging that they are carcinogens, ruin women’s fertility and cause miscarriages. And, like the bishops, she suggests that natural family planning, which has the highes…
Read More…r, over the years, we have seen that paradigm change. 2012 witnessed religious people and organizations at the forefront of LGBT advancement.” This from Ross Murray, at GLAAD, as part of an introduction to a list of Five LGBT Religious Advances of 2012. It’s a short list, but each item is a biggie: marriage equality, Catholic support, pro-LGBT Mormons… hey, next year we’ll get a proper Top Ten. …
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…Tarbell, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, Eleanor Roosevelt—it’s a very long list of reformers and independent thinkers. These are all WASPy names, as you may have noticed. I now want to add that in the American context, some of the greatest “Protestants” (in terms of freedom and spirit) have been anything but WASPy: I am thinking here of Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter and Benjamin Cardozo. And of Peter Zenger and Carl Schurz and John Peter Al…
Read More…insurgents — is seeking a closer alliance with Europe and remains keen to promote civil liberties freely enjoyed in much of the West. But homophobia remains rampant in a nation where the conservative Orthodox church wields considerable influence and nationalist far-right groups have grown more prominent. China: Student sues over textbook description of homosexuality as treatable disease A Chinese student has sued the Ministry of Education because…
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…year after year? I do not know the longer history of these year-end death lists, or why media both old and new have embraced this annual practice. The lists are neither exhaustive nor comprehensive—most of them are cultural repositories of once living people who are no longer, ghosts now brought to the public eye and representing… what? Fame? Accomplishment? Impact? Tragedy? All these are relevant, no doubt. Sacred Roll Call But there is somethin…
Read More…Minnesota Public Radio reports, “led the national response to the clergy abuse scandal in 2002 and helped write the U.S. Catholic Church’s policy on abuse.” He said he couldn’t remember if he ever received a list of abusers from his predecessor, if he investigated cases of abuse, or why he never released the list of 33 priests “credibly accused” of abuse by the diocese. I guess he wasn’t on duty….
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…the eugenics movement with your Origin in his hands. The Gilded Age capitalists loved you too. Hitler and Stalin thought they had your blessing when they exterminated millions. We know now that their interpretations were wrong. They saw in you what they wanted to see, not what you wrote or what the science means. Because of them, however, when William Jennings Bryan fought for creationism at “Scopes,” science wasn’t foremost on his mind. Human fr…
Read More…d authored a book called, Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Leo emailed Hardy to let her know of the connection, but noted that she had not actually read the book. Hardy said that was good enough for her and made a motion to remove the book from a proposed reading list. Hardy has been trying to pare down the lengthy proposed reading list. Except that it was a different Bill Martin, a DePaul University philosophy professor….
Read More…nd lesbians, though it has yet to be made into law. Kato was included in a list of 100 homosexuals whose names, addresses, and photographs were published in a Ugandan paper called Rolling Stone. The paper urged readers to kill those on the list. A Ugandan court ruling prevented the paper from publishing more names. Hopefully, Kato’s death will serve as a wake-up call to conservative evangelicals in the U.S. who have attempted to wash their hands o…
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