Religion Dispatches
Denver claims that its Columbus Day parade is the nation’s largest. It surely has been the most controversial; as Colorado’s large Native American rights movement often confronts the paraders. When I watched the proceedings a few years ago, though my sympathies were certainly with the protesters, I was surprised to find a different kind of sympathy for the paraders, too. They were all white folks, mostly Italian-Americans, riding in cars and on c…
Read MoreLate last week the Denver Post reported that Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, wants to have a conversation with reproductive rights advocates: Reproductive-rights supporters say they want abortion to be legal, safe and rare, Daly said, and so his Colorado Springs-based media powerhouse will try to walk that common ground with them — lessening demand for abortion. The “let’s talk” offer to reproductive-rights groups signals a sea change…
Read More…is one of the largest protestant denominations in Uganda and has a growing number of new converts in East Africa. In 2010, in the heat of the “Kill the Gays Bill” media frenzy, the Vice President of the Seventh-day Adventist African Conference vocally supported the law in Uganda while it still included death for those convicted of “homosexuality” (he later said in a classic non-apology apology that he had been misquoted).The Seventh-day Adventist…
Read More…form of protest. At the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, University of Denver political scientist Joshua Wilson argues that even if the Supreme Court strikes down the law, blockades and protests of the types that led to the passage of these laws are not likely to return. That’s because, Wilson argues, since the late 1990s clinic protests have dropped off, replaced with savvy lobbying and advocacy in state capitals, a sophisticated legal strate…
Read More…sex abuse scandal. He has been replaced by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver. A Muslim man shot in the face by a man in an anti-Islamic rage says he forgives the shooter and tried to stop his execution. A federal judge has ruled that Dixie County Florida must remove its Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse steps. It has been there since 2006. Another judge ruled that a group of devout and vegetarian Hindus in New Jersey could sue a…
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…ladelphia appointed its new leader last week, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. The Archbishop, who has presided over the “clean up” of several church scandals, most notably the Legionaries of Christ, will have his hands full with the Philadelphia grand jury reports and the upcoming trials, including that of Monsignor William Lynn, who has two felony charges against him for “purposefully shielding sexually abusive priests.” Philadelphia marks t…
Read More…igh Washington to serve as president.” A few years after its founding, the Denver, Colorado-based Promise Keepers experienced an extraordinary growth spurt, drawing tens of thousands of men to rallies in football stadiums and sports arenas across the country. As attendance at its rallies grew—278,000 in 1994, 738,000 in 1995 and more than a million in 1996—so did its revenues. In 1997, more than one million men gathered on the National Mall in Was…
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…, the Vatican announced that it had appointed Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver as the new archbishop of Philadelphia. The clergy abuse scandal that has badly damaged the hierarchy’s credibility is still spinning out of control in Philadelphia, and Pope Benedict XVI clearly thinks that Archbishop Chaput is the right man for a difficult job. We would only note that in his previous post, he supported a parish priest who expelled a girl from a Cath…
Read More…ill not receive reimbursement for those services? As the district court in Denver found in denying Little Sisters’ request for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs in the case “ignore the fact that, as participants in a church plan, they fall outside the [government’s] current enforcement authority.” The district court, in its ruling four days before the regulations went into effect, noted that “[p]laintiffs would have the court surmise that t…
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…ding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, an ELCA mission church in Denver, Colorado. In the book, she likens herself to “a Lutheran Nikita,” the fictional teenaged drug addict whose death was faked by the government so she could do their dirty work. “I was allowed not to die in exchange for working for God,” Bolz-Weber writes, “I’d have to become God’s bitch.” I had a chance to talk with Bolz-Weber about her journey and how she now finds i…
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