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“The Gift of Gay”: Father Matthew Kelty, Confessor to Thomas Merton, Dies at 96

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…act with his lover, Merton was granted permission to leave the Abbey for a trip to the Far East in the spring of 1968. His main purpose was to give a lecture in Bangkok on comparative monasticism and mysticism, but there was much more to the trip than that, as his published journals now reveal. He scoped out a variety of possible new hermitages along the way, had multiple audiences with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and visited the monumental Buddh…

Take the Van Gogh Challenge: Doctor Who Part VII

By Gabriel Mckee

…e’s ever gone before into “interfering” territory, bringing van Gogh for a trip in the TARDIS to see his work on display in the Musée d’Orsay. The artist is (understandably) awestruck—what greater contrast could there be to his day-to-day life, where he is perceived as an outcast, a drunk, a madman, and, worst of all, untalented? The Doctor and Amy hope that this visit to the future will rescue Vincent from despair and stop him from committing sui…

Getting Back into Blogging

By Amina Wadud

…etween some idea related to the hajj and something I thought about on this trip. I made a last-minute effort to at least buy presents for my grandsons, who already have a quite a collection of T-shirts from various places, if not from the airports on the way out of those places. It’s one of those “thought that counts” kind of things: a way of sharing something from my time away with them. In the dream, one of the members of my tour group lands in…

Obama in India: Missed Opportunities

By Anna Bigelow

…stration of Barack Obama’s leadership style was in sharp relief during his trip to India when he addressed issues relating to religion. On the one hand, he spoke eloquently of the importance of diversity and the shared values of the world’s religions—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. He visited Gandhi’s home and his cremation site, affirming the value of nonviolent resistance as the greatest mean to sustainable social change. Yet he also gave…

The (Mostly Catholic) Anti-Abortion Roe v. Wade Schlep

By Mary E. Hunt

…Catholic schools to enjoy a school sponsored (and in some cases paid for) trip to the Nation’s Capital. The older ones are college students who make a road trip of it, knowing that a night on a church floor and a day that begins with mass at the Verizon Center is a good way to meet (do they hook up, one wonders) other young people with similar theo-politics. This is not to trivialize what I take to be their commitment to eradicating abortion, a p…

The Anglican and the Evangelicals: Insights from the Sudanese Genocide

By Frederick Clarkson

…hnic Nuba, who are Black Africans, and predominantly Christian of various stripes, have been the target of a long-term ethnic cleansing and “Arabization” campaign by Khartoum. Hundreds of thousands had been killed as part of the wider civil war in which some two million people died, until the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Accord (to which the UN and the U.S. were signatories) slowed the violence. Unfortunately for the Nuba, the peace accord placed them…

Beck’s Road to Jerusalem

By Anthea Butler

…a Restoring Courage rally in Jerusalem on August 20, 2011. Fresh off of a trip to Jerusalem, Beck announced the “Restoring Courage” rally on his radio show: “God is involved in man’s affairs, but so is the force of darkness,” adding, “I believe I’ve been asked to stand in Jerusalem. Many in the history of man have had the opportunity to stand with the Jewish people … and they have failed.” Beck’s obsessions with Jews, from his attacks on George S…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…

Boy Scout “Perversion Files” Raise Questions about Abuse in Mormon Contexts

By Joanna Brooks

…ims and accusers. In 1995, the Church established stronger guidelines and new protocols for reporting abuse, including a 1-800 number for local clergy. …

Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…he [imagined] danger through aggression and power.” As Beinart argues, the number of American Jews who act out of fantasied oppression is declining. But their political strength remains much greater than their numbers. Yet curiously Lerner, the professional psychologist, downplays this and the other psychological wellsprings of support for militant Zionism. Instead he focuses time and again on compassion for the very real historical sufferings of…