Religion Dispatches
…have been following it closely. Sinauer Associates is a small publishing house that publishes college-level science textbooks, some of which are used in high school advanced placement classes. Sinauer, along with W.H. Freeman jointly published Hillis’ Science of Biology and Molecular Systemics. President Andrew Sinauer said his company would never consider inserting anti-evolution language into a textbook to make a sale to creationists. “We simply…
Read More…s have played in promoting conservative policies and the political tactics used to advance them. The report discusses the right’s use of “gender ideology,” which it describes as a “pseudo-scientific term” that “is used as a political tool to curtail further development of sexual and reproductive health and rights.” From the report (with source citations removed): This strategic attempt by Catholic church to redefine cultural and political debate r…
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…rs forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedi…
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…aception as, “characteristic of a less than fully human way of acting, because it diminishes the need for reason and the use of the will to make responsible and truly loving decisions about how to use one’s God-given gift of sexuality.” As a moral theologian and sexual ethicist, I completely disagree. The ability of a young person to make a decision about any sexual behavior that includes protecting one’s self and partner from disease or pregnancy…
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…moral types of behaviour. Should the Church teach that a rapist must never use a condom because otherwise he would additionally to the sin of rape fail to respect “mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violate the Sixth Commandment”? Of course not. What do I, as a Catholic priest, tell AIDS-infected promiscuous people or homosexuals who are using condoms? I will try to help them to live an upright and well-ordered sexual life. But I wi…
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…as guides during an experience itself. Most of the discussion, however, focused on how chaplains might help users understand and integrate their experiences in light of pre-existing faith commitments. As trained caregivers, chaplains could play an important role in the newly-emerging psychedelic landscape, providing guidance to those who may choose to incorporate the use of psychedelics into their own spiritual journeys. We could perhaps think abo…
Read More…twist themselves into knots to avoid admitting that the same argument was used to oppose interracial marriages—which it definitely was. Of course, modern “religious freedom” has been interpreted so broadly that it now covers all manner of sins. Are you a business owner who doesn’t want to employ trans people? Just say your faith doesn’t allow you to recognize your trans female employee as a woman, which means she’s violating the dress code when s…
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…fairly specific set of institutions and political positions, is regularly used as code for “most of Islam.” And those who obsesses about Islamism often flirt with more bald-faced statements of Islamophobia. Critics of white supremacy and patriarchy, on the other hand, point out that these ideologies are pervasive in the culture at large. The blame casts a wide net, not in order to single out a minority group, but in order to implicate a culture t…
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…Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States. These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envi…
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…ons but, like the Bush Administration before it, the administration has refused because of Mugabe’s ongoing human rights abuses, including controlling the country’s diamond wealth by military force and violence, and repression of political opposition and free press. Legalizing Homosexuality Could “Bring a Curse” The EFZ/ACLJ pamphlet also calls for constitutional prohibitions on both abortion, by defining life as “beginning at conception,” and on…
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