Religion Dispatches
…eturn to poetry… and global, as in global warming. In the mountains of New Mexico where he lives, there’s been little rain for eight years. 40% of forests have been lost. It also evokes poetry’s shamanic lineage, extending back to humankind’s earliest rain-bringers and tribal healers. In the Edo period of Japan, for instance, Kikaku, a close disciple of Zen haiku master Basho, reputedly ended drought by reciting poetry. The flipside of drought is…
Read More…hildren to school for fear that police would pick them up and send them to Mexico. Many refused to talk to me at all, fearing something they said could get someone they know deported. A pastor kicked me off the grounds of a church that ran a day labor site, saying that lawyers prohibited anyone there speaking to the press. What made the incident so sad was that the church, Southside Presbyterian, birthed the Sanctuary Movement in the early 80s. It…
Read More…e way the Church has moved over the last decade from counseling members in Mexico against immigration to adopting the equivalent of a “don’t ask don’t tell policy” on matters of immigration status in the United States. As I’ve written before here at RD, I see this as evidence that the LDS Church is showing a willingness to move away from the ultraconservative and nationalistic politics that have defined its multigenerational ethnic core as it embr…
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…ea, Australia, and across Latin America and the borderlands of America and Mexico. The number of apparitions in the U.S. seems to keep rising, but not because of Belgian immigrants to Wisconsin. What seems to be an increase in apparitions is probably a jump in reports of apparitions and manifestations of the Virgin. Rumors of miracles and visions now fly around the globe via the internet, rather than moving locally through the whispers of neighbor…
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…believed the US has descended into oligarchy, had been living in southern Mexico. He had returned to Winchester for treatment after his diagnosis. Bageant’s strength as a writer was that he could write both with great affection for his ancestry, but with a remarkable clear-eyed honesty of the weaknesses and flaws in those from whom he descends. His works were no Greatest Generation mythos. Consequently, he provides valuable insight into why so ma…
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…if understated. (Compare this, for instance, with a recent Craig debate in Mexico, where the podium was in the middle of a boxing ring.) The debaters sat onstage at a table with the moderator between them—Michael Rea, who heads Notre Dame’s prestigious Center for the Philosophy of Religion. They each gave their remarks by rising, one at a time, to separate podiums on either side of the table. William Lane Craig had on his signature attire: a blue…
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…orado, relayed a story told to him by a Protestant pastor. This man was in Mexico doing missionary work and had, for many years, refused to participate in annual Day of the Dead celebrations. He complained about the money that the people spent on candles and lamented their engagement with what he saw as “evil.” However, the year his father died, he reluctantly went to the cemetery. As the night went on, the pastor “lit candles, told stories of his…
Read More…claims. An organization called International Databases Inc., based in New Mexico, has submitted supplementary material featuring outright promotion of intelligent design. NCSE’s Josh Rosenau also said the material was filled with misspellings and typos. According to TFN: NCSE found creationist claims and factual errors throughout International Databases’ materials, including: * Religious claims such as “life on Earth is the result of intelligent…
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…regular basis. Many bishops do, but not all. In the Diocese of Gallup, New Mexico, for example, the chair of the review board recently admitted that the bishop has never met with the board. The relationship between a review board and the bishop should not be adversarial or distant. Review boards are meant to help a bishop do his job. Second, standardize review-board procedures. Not all review boards are created equal. In Philadelphia, for example…
Read More…s oppose the lifting of the global gag rule, known to conservatives as the Mexico City Policy. That policy, which every Republican since Reagan has upheld and every Democrat reversed, prohibits, by executive order, the use of U.S. family planning funds to NGOs abroad who use other funds to provide abortions or even referrals to abortion providers. It’s widely seen by reproductive health advocates, as Population Action International puts it, as “er…
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