Religion Dispatches
…g that his presence might console a troubled nation. A Culture War Laundry List It is no coincidence that the coming Easter season prompted Sicilia’s impassioned plea for papal solidarity. The poet compares Mexico to the broken body of Christ, beaten, abandoned, and left for dead: “In their name, for this us, for this body, I have come to Rome, Benedict, to ask that in your visit to Mexico you embrace it, before anyone, as the Father embraced the…
Read More…f a memorandum from President Obama charging US foreign policy agencies to promote LGBT rights said that US efforts have been important to activists promoting equality and facing persecution around the world. Read the Washington Blade’s report here. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast hosted an event called Quorum: Global LGBT Voices that featured interviews with more than 25 activists from around the world to talk about “what is happening on the front…
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…d in the New Testament book of Ephesians: apostle, prophet, teacher, evangelist, and pastor—what they call “the five-fold ministry.” Some well-known Christian Right figures in the NAR camp include Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, Apostle Paula White; Texas-based Christian Right strategist David Barton; Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference; and Lt. Gen. William Boykin, (ret.) Executive Vice President of the Family R…
Read More…rom which to choose people to deliver prayers, they are making available a list of individuals who are able to deliver an invocation from a secular or atheist perspective. From the group’s statement: The Supreme Court’s ruling, authored by Justice Kennedy, makes clear that local governments must make “reasonable efforts to identify all of the congregations located within its borders” and welcome an invocation by anyone who wishes to give one, rega…
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…stiest mass murderers claim religious inspiration. Defenders: That’s a simplistic way to look at an incredibly complex history that has everything to do with the coming of modernity and an abortive nationalism to much of the Middle East, and little to do with Islam or with a serious reading of the Qur’an. The problem with those who carried out the actions on 9/11 is precisely how little they knew of Islam, not how much. NA: For every Mother Teresa…
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…f church leaders in them who then forcefully oppose marriage equality. The list included ranking church officials and, according to Galarza, not only consensual relationships but “also cases of sexual abuse.” The decision to publish this list has not only been criticized by conservative opponents of LGBT equality, but by LGBT groups who are upset that anyone would be forcibly outed. Enrique Torre Molina of All Out told The Telegraph: “‘They can sp…
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…Byrd’s Senate seat. And he is a Democrat. Regrettably we have a very long list of names from which to trade out for Adams’ list of victims of overheated rhetoric and political assassination: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy… As I look out over the wasteland of current political speech, and the difficult terrain lying before this Republic in the next two years, it is Adams’ final line to which I keep returning. It offers a conc…
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…urban is an object of enmity and suspicion, just take a glance at SALDEF’s list of Facebook groups below dedicated to mocking the turban. Many of said groups implicitly link turban-wearing to Islam, and especially radical Islam, such as “Roses are red, my turban is blue, become a fan, or I will bomb you.” Others simply mock Sikhs as foreign such as, “LSMMTUAFIMC = Laughing so much my turban unravels and falls in my curry,” which has over 630,000 l…
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…arenting and its implications for child development.” Sullins’ main talk enlisted countless slides with numbers, tables, and colored graphs in an effort to question the well established fact that, in addition to scant data supporting even a modest success rate, treatments aiming to suppress sexual orientation or gender expression can cause serious damage, or even be deadly. His own research, however, has essentially been deemed junk science by tho…
Read More…nfold, my Trump Funk even deepens. Most readers needn’t be reminded of the list of depressing executive actions and policies feeding our collective depression. That’s not why I write now. I do so to try to understand why, after nearly 2 years, the Trump Funk seems a nearly bottomless pit of emotional darkness, worse even than what we’d have the right to expect in the wake of a mere election defeat? Why the oft heard, but inarticulate, lament of pu…
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