Religion Dispatches
…ent American Muslims. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community does not appear to be welcome under that umbrella. For example, polling and census data collected and analyzed by American Muslim organizations never includes the opinions of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Even Ahmadi Muslim mosques are not counted among the total number of mosques in America. As another example, when 86 Ahmadi Muslims were brutally massacred in twin bomb attacks in Lahore on M…
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…ly not a civil ceremony Mr. Kushner was proposing. It was a religious one. Welcome to the strange new world of wedding celebrants. When I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister more than 30 years ago, the only wedding officiants were public officials and members of the clergy. Couples seeking a religious ceremony had to sidle up to someone like me and ask if I’d be willing to oblige. As long as one or both of them professed Christian faith, I was…
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…ests to step out of the dark. Bishops may well need to brace themselves or welcome with open arms a greater honesty in this matter. Meanwhile, for the gay priest who suffers under the church’s disparagement of his God-given sexuality and is urged to negate an essential part of who he is, the pope’s stated preference not to judge is balm in Gilead. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $10 will help us pay writers, coders, interns, and editor…
Read More…ore “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage. There’s an embedded fallacy there, of course, that gay marriage “undermine[s] the nature of m…
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…she moved away from it. It was the kind of bad companion loneliness makes welcome. You might continue reading from there until you feel that the author’s run of memorable sentences has played itself out, which is another way of getting to page 281 and the paragraphs previously mentioned. 3. The character in Home lonely enough to welcome the radio’s bad companionship is a thirty-eight year-old ex-schoolteacher named Glory, who provides the narrati…
Read More…iolence towards LGBT people. And the emotional pain as well of not feeling welcome, supported, and connected. The leadership of the LDS Church has taken a lot of steps forward, and I’ve been really happy and excited about it. In trying to become more educated on gay issues, I’ve felt in alignment with Church leadership. I think it’s fair to say that some of the LDS membership has not completely caught up to where the leadership is now. When you us…
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…eans the example American freedom offers to the world; the beacon is not a welcome (that “cosmopolitan” sentiment, to use Miller’s snide euphemism, is just a partisan stance). This is doubly dangerous ground. First, American history has so spectacularly clashed with American ideals (see: slavery). Second, by dismissing Acosta’s reading of Lady Liberty as partisan, Miller switches the register of language used, from that of religious discourse—in w…
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…ts before murdering them in their sleep, so Dylann Roof received a cordial welcomed into Emanuel Church’s Bible study. He sat placidly with his victims for an hour before pulling out his gun and killing those who had welcomed him. Who is to know what the slain church members thought, at first, of this taciturn young white man who had knocked on the church door, asking to see the pastor? He sat at table with them, perhaps even engaged in discussion…
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…its annual gathering: gays and those preaching tolerance for them are not welcome inside the Convention’s annual meeting. At least, that’s the message sent loud and clear to a small group of activists who tell RD they were “forcibly removed” from the convention this morning in Phoenix, Arizona. All told, five people were removed and had their conference registrations revoked, allegedly without formal explanation. All of those removed are affiliat…
Read More…d. “Because those documents now said that, I feel my ideas and I are still welcome in the ELCA,” he said. Those who don’t feel their ideas are welcome are pulling away from the church to gather under a newer, smaller, tent. A new Lutheran denomination, the North American Lutheran Church, is being formed from churches who have left the denomination, upset that gay and lesbian ministers are being accepted. It reminds me of a question my conservative…
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