Religion Dispatches
…e on Facebook, within a few comments someone asked the question: What’s to stop someone from just choosing a different hospital, if they have such a problem with the kind of care that a Catholic hospital can provide? The question was sincere, but good grief, the phrase “having it both ways” comes to mind. What’s to stop a hypothetical patient from picking the option they like best, from among several convenient locations near their home? Well,…
Read More
…been subpoenaed by the committee, and he now claims that he was trying to stop the riot. Like Jones, Roger Stone was also part of the ‘Stop the Steal’ effort. Although he claims he had no advance knowledge of the attack, he spoke at the Jan 5 rally and was plotting at the Willard Hotel with Bannon, John Eastman (the lawyer who wrote a memo outlining the legal case for rejecting the election result) and others. Ali Alexander was a driving force be…
Read More
…rch where a Black leader is in charge,” said Ramirez. For his Azusa Street stop, Feucht is partnering with the Azusa Street Mission and Historical Society, a ministry founded in 2006 by Fred and Wilma Berry, a pair of Black pastors. His stop will run concurrently to the mission’s own New Year’s Eve worship event, during which they’ll be planting a “unity tree” in the courtyard of the JACCC. Ramirez said the brief stop is not enough to lend Azusa-e…
Read More
…re is no reason for Christians who are also good people to despair if they stop trying to “save” Jesus and instead open themselves up to this more nuanced view. According to Onishi, “Faith communities interpreting sacred texts would do well to recognize that every rendering of Jesus and Christianity is partly inspired by certain values and priorities within the community. Theology is creating God in our image.” Yes, he admits, “That scares many pe…
Read More…of the Catholic Education piece. It suggests an admission that efforts to stop same-sex love have failed miserably, starting with the majority-gay male clergy. What’s a few lesbian, gay, and bi people after all, the institutional church seems to be saying; at least they know the players without a score card. The real game changer is that claims that sex/gender are fixed, defined, and limited pale before the reality of changing, fluid, varied sex/…
Read More
…ence of Christian privilege can make being a Hindu—or being from any other non-Christian group—feel isolating. Apu—and the chilled monkey brains scene from Indiana Jones—made that isolation worse for many Hindus. Azaria’s sort-of apology and offer to stop voicing Apu (and suggest hiring South Asian writers) just seems as if it’s a reaction to a belated movement to end an offensive stereotype. But if Azaria, Matt Groening and Fox had really wanted…
Read More
…reen-robed choir members, take to the city subways for a series of whistle stop tours. Like panhandlers or mariachi bands, they stay in each car for only a stop or two, giving a short spiel, singing a song, and shaking hands before moving on to the next one. The tours take their theme from the trains they’re on, like “F the Fare Hike,” “Neighborhoods on the N Train,” and “2 Train for 2 Terms.” Talen insists that he is serious about presenting him…
Read More
…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…
Read More
…d-faith effort to inject civility into conversations between believers and non-believers. The app may not convince many people to become atheists. But that’s not the point. Instead, at best, Atheos is an instructive tool for non-believers to reflect on their own positions more critically and thoughtfully. Atheos is structured as a gamified set of questions and answers inspired by the Socratic method. Users open the app and make their way through “…
Read More
…ut it is more or less settled opinion. Religiously unaffiliated voters and non-white Christians played more of a role in making it so than white Catholics, mainline Protestants, or evangelicals. There are many open questions on the left these days, about whether the current American political system is sustainable, how best to address Trumpism, whether racial or economic approaches ought to be prioritized. These aren’t problems with easy solutions…
Read More