Religion Dispatches
…g that keeps Americans from their hard-won incomes and dreams of financial freedom in a free market is a disgrace, if not downright devilry. Tea Partiers and party-challenged Republicans are basking in the glory of their victories, secure in the knowledge that a message pitting the “little man” against the “big government” resonated deeply and widely for many Americans in the first decade of the 21st century who hate government, love the military,…
Read More…imed at limiting the free distribution of Israel Hayom (Israel Today), the free newspaper owned by American casino magnate and Republican super-funder Sheldon Adelson. The same Sheldon Adelson who, at the inaugural meeting of the Israeli American Council in Washington on Sunday, said, “I don’t like journalism.” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer explains the anti-Adelson bill that advanced today: The law, proposed by MK Eitan Cabel (Knesset) and sponsored b…
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…the United States, you need financial and social resources. The organs are free—they’ve been donated—but the surgery, follow up visits, and medications are not free. They’re quite expensive. The estimated cost for a transplant and 180 days of follow up and medications ranges from $414,000 (kidney) to $1.3 million (heart), a cost that has to be found either in your bank account or in the bank account of your insurance company in order to get an org…
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…sons” and, on the other, “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms,” including the free exercise of religion. And therein lies a second, likely much less welcome upshot for gay rights advocates. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court argued that the Civil Rights Commission unfairly treated Phillips in two ways. His first argument, that the commission permitted other bakeries to refuse service to customers who wished to commission…
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…hat African people would do, because they’re cursed. We still wouldn’t get free. There’s no freedom anywhere. And that it was God’s idea—it was not white people’s ide it was God’s idea that we be in that place. And there was a church in Welshneck, South Carolina that, when the Emancipation proclamation came and African people were freed, a group of them went to this church and wanted to become members of the church. Now of course they couldn’t si…
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…whether we have finally woken up from our dream of perpetually cheap oil, free of all cost, free of all sacrifice. And yet the events in the Gulf call out for confession, for corporate confession and repentance. By corporate I mean BP, of course, but even more importantly I mean our society as a corporate whole. We must move beyond defensiveness and self-righteousness and work toward a cultural consensus that acknowledges the vital work of regula…
Read More…is at the heart of both the arguments to allow gay marriage and those that promote the traditional definition of marriage,” he said. He also asked the Legislature to consider freedom of religion when moving forward with legislation to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision. South Africa: Call for inclusive sex education Advocates for sexuality education in South Africa are urging schools to move beyond the “when a boy loves a girl” narrative that is…
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…then, seeking a court, an institution really of the state, to preserve or promote such “freedoms” may be a last resort of conservative evangelicals. And I doubt that, in a dramatically changing and diversifying country, it will bring in substantial political or social rewards. But it may help evangelicals to retain what they have won over the better part of a century and still seek in thousands of small businesses and myriad business activities,…
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…tual world, but as someone who teaches about race, and slavery, you can be free even if others don’t think you are, or are worthy of being free. The bigger question that goes alongside of this is: can you become divine if you’re not real? Hmmn. That brings up all sorts of issues, especially if, as it seems presently, the writers are making this new religion suspiciously like Catholicism. I hope that the writers won’t go in the easy direction of co…
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…molated last year, says Tenzin Jigdal, program director for Students for a Free Tibet—India. Refugees born in Tibet cannot easily forget China’s repression, says Wangdue, 33, a “mountain boy” from Tibet with just one name. He hung out at his open-air clothing shop along the narrow path of Majnu Ka Tilla with Norbu Tsetam, 25, who was born in India. “He hears about Tibet, but he cannot see Tibet,” Wangdue says of his friend. “Sometimes I feel I’m a…
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