Religion Dispatches
…nd Byron and I drove a U-Haul filled with my belongings from California to Miami. We were living in Guatemala at the time and he was here on a tourist visa. I was six months pregnant. Along the way, my husband at the wheel, we were pulled over by the police for going 10 miles over the speed limit even as other cars, going much faster, sped by. A look at my husband’s Guatemalan license and passport (with visa) and the officer escorted him to the pa…
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…ir multi-national, multi-racial and multi-ethnic character. That said, the numbers of nations and people that we mention are sourced solely on the claims of the groups themselves. We have no way to independently verify these numbers, so they should be used advisedly. Simply put, the global vision of the NAR is based on their understanding of the Great Commission text of Matthew 28:18-20, with an emphasis on “discipling nations” (28:19). Internatio…
Read More…zine, those who cooked up the visit over breakfasts at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem a month ago were Romney’s adviser Dan Senor and Netanyahu’s adviser, Ron Dermer, who himself hails from a Republican family in Miami. The two clandestinely planned the visit in order to preempt Barak Obama visiting Israel before the Republican candidate. Senor and Dermer decided to give the scoop on the visit to the New York Times….
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…ing this is, we could have a letter in our files from 1990 from a woman in Miami who was molested in Arkansas by a priest who later went to Alaska, and she could have told no one and all parties could be dead. But if it’s in our files from 1990, we’re supposed to turn that over to the other side. Why not release them? First of all, people expect and we had promised that when they come to us for help, their privacy will be protected. For the most p…
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…crescendo of Bronco praise: “Tebow! Tebow!” Yesterday, against the hapless Miami Dolphins who were 0 and 5 going into the game, Tebow started and spent three quarters playing the before role in the saint narrative. Throwing errant passes, misreading defensive coverage, and threatening to leave the Broncos with their first scoreless game since 1992, he looked weak and bewildered. With a little over two minutes left, all heaven broke loose. In myths…
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…depiction in unsettling plotlines on crime shows like Law & Order and CSI: Miami. But in José Merced v. City of Euless, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Merced, a Santería priest in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was acting within his Constitutional rights when he sacrificed goats and other animals as part of the ritual home-practice that accompanied him from Puerto Rico. In fact, the court suggested that such Constitutional prot…
Read More…tity’ were the ones who molested children.” Also in the news this week was Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who sent a memo to all employees of the diocese reiterating that they could be fired if they express support for gay marriage on social media. New Ways Ministry’s Bob Shine called the memo “a most tragic way to start the new year.” Africa: ‘Distinctive, Moderate and Tolerant Islam’ Challenged by Extremists The Mail & Guardian Africa profiles…
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…tholic Malta,” where “most of the line’s fleet is registered,” reports the Miami Herald. Romania: Marriage-Refusing Clerk Kim Davis Joins Liberty Counsel’s Anti-Marriage Crusade We reported last week on U.S.-based conservative Christian groups supporting Romania’s “illiberal” move to put a ban on same-sex couples marrying into the country’s Constitution. More details have emerged, including the fact that anti-LGBT legal group Liberty Counsel took…
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…elicals for Trump during the 2020 presidential campaign at El Rey Jesús, a Miami megachurch from which he leads an apostolic network that he claims extends into 70 countries. Just nutty, or nationally significant? There are, of course, many reasons to seek to get NAR-related stories and the details right. But as writers we need to ask ourselves, how can readers be expected to understand the relative significance of a person or a movement, if the l…
Read More…ssible and what is not. -The body: As we are betwixt the 44th Superbowl in Miami, and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the question of the perfectable body again crops up. How can this human body be disciplined and maintained? Is it all about genetics? Or drugs? Or, possibly altered from male to female and back? Or might it just be good solid exercise? All in all, see Gary Laderman’s RD story last year, which shows how the Janet Jackson “nipple i…
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