Religion Dispatches
…ou’ll read an excerpt below—has surprised me, too. I wish I could find my airline companion and give him this book, to surprise him, too—in a good way. (I would accept Lakers tickets in lieu of apologies, but I think that particular era is done.) This whole book is a result of a profound evolution, and needs to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us ou…
Read MoreAt oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties, Inc. v. Sebelius this morning, the Supreme Court justices spent a great deal of time questioning the lawyers in the case about whether corporations have a religious conscience, and whether Congress intended to protect it when enacting the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). What was most striking, though, was how all three female justices, Sonia So…
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…he continued. “Who is a member and who is not? Who plays what role? What causal contribution do they make?” These questions were familiar to me—I’d been asking them about Ferguson lawmakers and JetBlue customer service representatives. “Institutions have power,” Malle continued. “They have an enormous influence, they can withhold goods or they can confer goods — and in your case, Jet Blue withheld the goods of you actually being able to take your…
Read More…City tag.” He notes that anti-gay religious activists, while not large in number, are relatively vocal: Choi Chi-sum, general secretary of the conservative Christian group, the Society For Truth And Light, for example, has been given an increasingly prominent stage to present his views following Taiwan’s legislative change. His opinions on same-sex marriage, sexual minority anti-discrimination laws, and even the recent “controversy” over a homose…
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…at has to be paid for by some common process, like taxes. (Compare this to Europe, where people seem to understand all that and take it for granted.) So there isn’t really a very clear causal understanding of how these things work, how institutions take in, for example, payments, taxes, or conferred power, and how they’re distributed and cause processes and goods in the world that people then benefit from. I think, if we started already with that,…
Read More…ore refused to discontinue a promotion which offers its customers discount tickets to a Christian magic show produced by Lawrence Khong, the anti-gay pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church: Mr Khong has claimed that gay people have “a shorter lifespan, more sexually transmitted infections and more health problems than the general population” and has warned of a “looming threat” of “homosexual activists” trying to repeal sodomy laws. Many custome…
Read More…the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth meet Girl Scouts USA’s standards, rather than just the other way around? Girl Scouts USA has, after all, developed significant programming to encourage girls to pursue their interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The website even calls girls “natural scientists”! Moreover, when faced with abuse disclosures from scouts, Girl Scout volunteers are instructed to “tell h…
Read More…d/or illegal. Except now he’s signing the pledge put forward by Personhood USA, which says . . . the opposite. Indeed, spokeswoman Jennifer Mason had said just weeks ago, “If Newt Gingrich believes that life begins at implantation, he is scientifically incorrect. . . Any human embryology textbook confirms that life begins at the moment of fertilization.” So did he inexplicably change his mind, opting for the bluntest possible definition of fetal…
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…ment of 50,000, as if the faithful at church. The devotion was audible, as tickets were distributed to friends of the Cuban government and not through a public sale. Here the religious nature of the Cuban sporting event is acknowledged only to be dismissed as inauthentic. The patriotic, quasi-religious crooning is suspicious because of its apparent production by the Cuban government, which distributed tickets to friends. Morosi recognizes religiou…
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…ust be made to enforce it. In the April 2007 priesthood session, a musical number was provided by a men’s chorus. The chorus was selected and trained by Brigham Young University professor Rosalind Hall, who also chose the music for the choir—but Hall was not allowed to attend the performance; instead, she was replaced by a male colleague, Ronald Staheli, for that one event. In fact, Hall was not even allowed to be in the conference hall to hear he…
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