Religion Dispatches
…e and attempted to make the case that Democrats had betrayed “inner city African-Americans.” It was a curious choice of topics, given that West Bend is a small—very white—city in an exurban area about 45 minutes from downtown Milwaukee. Trump literally spoke in the main hall of the county fairgrounds. I happen to know so much about it because one of my former churches is in the same county. They called it a town, but it wasn’t even a wide spot in…
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…r, in the depths of a heartland winter, to knock on doors and bring out Americans she had never met to join in her campaign of hope, of yes we can. And you can bet that when she called me from Iowa to relate her progress there was a smile in her voice and not a hint of complaint about the weather or anything else. Sarah was also unalterably opposed to the death penalty. In his eulogy, Horowitz described how Sarah, often suffering from her own cons…
Read More…d the Mormon Church by uniting with Glenn Beck in the two events that were promoted as spiritual. Cameron, known also for his part on the television series Growing Pains and more recently nicknamed Banana-man (along with Ray Comfort) for the anti-evolution DVDs that became the source of tremendous internet humor, said he hadn’t actually been invited to be part of Divine Destiny. But he declined anyway: I had heard that there were plans to put me o…
Read More…as marriage: Badgett says same-sex partners are more likely to be poor because they lack such safety nets as a spouse’s health insurance coverage and Social Security survivor benefits. With the “culture wars” on the wane, one might think that perhaps marriage rights for gays and lesbians would elicit more yawns than howls, but it’s Berry’s support for opening up federal benefits for gay and lesbian employees that is really causing the howl from th…
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…tholic feminist theologian does it with wit and drollery, with courage and freedom, and with the humility that truly great minds practice, without consciously doing so. Reading her is bracing, even exhilarating. I would never have got through the last 40 years of Roman Catholic history with my feminist identity intact and my spirit unembittered without the companionship of her work. On a couple of occasions at women’s meetings on sexual and reprod…
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…ked a boundary between the two. That boundary is harder to find in most American cities, where the divide between “Anytown” and “the greater Anytown area” might not be a line at all, but a more gradual widening of lot sizes, along with some demographic shifts. A lot of people who aren’t residents of a city proper might have to do business in the city limits daily, both relying on and contributing to the city’s economic strength. Which brings us to…
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…normalized in Lynchburg public schools (which had a small proportion of African-American students relative to other southern locales), LCA would need other rationales to sustain enrollment. The school found a winning strategy in promoting family values. LCA portrayed its mission as supporting Christian families and promised to shape young men and women who knew their place. A 1975 promotional brochure for the school advertised, “we have no hippie…
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…her than try to change God’s standards” (1-14-08). 6.) TOP TEN COMPARISONS BETWEEN RELIGION AND DENTISTRY: Between Google ads for “oral sedation” and “dental fear,” blogger Mark Wright writes thoughtfully about many things. On this list he points out, helpfully, that “Both Dentistry and Religion benefit financially from your sins” and reminds us that “In Religion there is the promise of Heaven. In Dentistry there is only Hell.” 7.) BOOKLIST’S TOP…
Read More…n-sadness-than-in-anger ahistorical fretting about what has happened to American political discourse, the project fairly cries out for a sound thumping by the very contemptuous churls it seeks to corral. Fortunately, while it is true generally that I refuse to go along with any attempt to transcend the partisanship of, well, partisan politics, in this case somebody has done my dirty work for me: Dr. George O. Wood, general superintendent of the As…
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…onse. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.” Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totall…
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