Religion Dispatches
…any other name) a Reconstructionist? And as Gerson noted in his essay, the number of people who can be labeled in this way would “fit in a phone booth.” (Actually there are significantly more than he recognizes, but I take his point.) My point, though, is that this is the wrong question. Far more interesting, I think, is to look at the influence of Christian Reconstruction; how has it impacted the style of the conservative Christianity that makes…
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…he Opera Theatre to be banned. The European Court of Human Rights has on a number of occasions found that the likelihood of counter-events does not justify restricting citizens right to peaceful assembly. The regional police also asked for the ban, although it is they who are obliged to protect all citizens exercising their right to gather. Indonesia: Anti-Gay Islamists Continue Rhetorical War On LGBTs Weeks of escalating anti-gay rhetoric in Indo…
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…l I could no longer live with it. Then, one day while I was talking on the phone in a dark room, just like that, I shed my belief in a literal “first couple.” Strangely, I don’t remember who I was talking to or what the conversation was about, but all at once I understood and it felt great. Yet my childhood belief had provided protection for me and had given shape to my understanding of God and even of myself, and what did I have to replace it wit…
Read More…llege they call ‘home’ would act this way.” When I spoke to Corvino on the phone Tuesday, he seemed to be wrestling with the same concerns, noting that the school’s sudden cancellation of his event sent the message that the presence of openly gay folks was like “a virus that might infect the students if they’re not protected.” Corvino reflected this same concern in a blog post Wednesday, It’s difficult not to feel as if the Providence College admi…
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…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…
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…tails ties to the Reichsbürger milieu. Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a heightened awareness and the agencies’ attempts to reduce the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused to conduct a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the warnings of social scientists who urged him to commission one. For ye…
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…ls may be convened. For example, in August of 2004, Lhasa city authorities changed the date of the Drepung Zhotön festival, which traditionally varies according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, in order to promote tourism. Of the various policies implemented by Chinese governmental agencies in recent years two have been the greatest source of friction between the clergy and the government. The control of the number of monks and nuns in monastic inst…
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…her Roman Catholic or inter- and non-denominational seminaries. “Even when change has been a long time coming, and even when change has been part of an institution’s history, the end of a seminary as its constituents know it is painful.” Legacy funding can only go so far, however, with enrollments dropping 24 percent in the past decade. Episcopal Divinity School still held $53 million in investments, plus its campus, at the time of its announced c…
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…of the correlation between religious affiliation and attitudes to climate change. (White Protestant men – the GOP base? – were most skeptical of human influence upon climate change, for instance.) Now, while such information does advance understanding, such studies are almost never done under the auspices of the AAR, an organization made up of theologians and humanists. The Society of the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), meanwhile, is populat…
Read More…ut of hand. Bush is certainly entitled to his personal opinions on climate change (even in the face of scientific consensus), but as a Catholic he is not entitled to reject the Vatican’s very authority to speak on matters of public urgency. Probably no other encyclical has caused this much public consternation, particularly before its publication, since the furor over 1968’s Humanae vitae, a controversy that also concerned the role of conscience….
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