Religion Dispatches
…s thought that Hispanics are more traditional than other groups in America and I just don’t see that having any bearing based on this data. Hispanics are as open to ‘alternative communities’ as any other group in the United States,” Dutwin said….
Read More
…our project is a model and provides a laboratory for addressing these big questions. The components are there for a good experiment: a religious leader and a religion, Tibetan Buddhism, unusually open to discussion and integration (see my other RD column on this), science educators eager to teach and learn, and all open to the opportunity for new ideas and knowledge to emerge. Take Tashi’s question about bacteria and light. We’d spent the whole w…
Read More
…re liberal churches declining? Liberal churches, more or less, are for post-60-year-olds. What I’d say to liberal churches is that it’s not a bad thing to have a mature congregation, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re actually doing something that you’re not. They also have to find a positive message. Liberals are good at saying, “We’re not fundamentalist, we’re not sexist, we’re not homophobes, we’re not warmongers, we’re not narro…
Read More
…Patriarch Kirill, is the chief pastor of Ukraine, to the point of causing open rifts within the wider global Orthodox communion, these are damning failures. But schism or no schism, these instances of objection from within churches ostensibly under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate suggest once again that this is not only a war between Russia and the West, but a war within Orthodoxy itself. While no one would expect people to easily pray f…
Read More…rgues that what we now call homosexuality was much more accepted in the pre-modern Islamic period. And Alaa Al-Awany’s wonderful novel The Yacoubian Building shows what an open secret homosexuality is in Egypt. More importantly, and credit to the interviewer Michelangelo Signorile for doing his homework, she moves away from the ikhwanophobia framing of the revolt. What that means is that we actually have to engage with what a revolution for right…
Read More
…off. The Nature of Good and Evil Both sides of this conflict appeal to the New Testament. In the Gospels, Jesus does consistently side with “sinful women” against the Pharisees, to whom he states “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matt: 21:31). On the other hand, Jesus’ lenient attitude towards sinners assumes that they will repent if given a chance. After saving the adulteress in John 8 he tells…
Read More
…itary and relatively few resources. Israel is a first-world country with a high-powered military and nuclear weapons. Even if they were brutally victimized, Israelis in Tel Aviv are not the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and they’re not living in concentration camps. Holocaust parallels only illustrate the extent to which Zionism is in a deep crisis of identity. Thomas Friedman famously claimed Israel had become, or is susceptible to become, “Yad Vashe…
Read More
…ntire movement called “complementarianism,” a theological doctrine of equal-but-separate sexes based in the “joyful submission” of wives and the restriction of female authority. In 1998, they succeeded in adding a new article to Baptist Faith and Message on the theology of the family: The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husb…
Read More
…open, despite the risk to their employees. My wife’s hair stylist is immune-compromised. A waitress we’ve grown close to at our favorite bar has multiple sclerosis. Neither can afford to refuse to work. Before you know it, they’ll both be back at the job, safe or not. In turn, that puts people like my wife and me in a bind. Do we support the local businesses we’ve long had a commitment to and the people who rely on them for a paycheck? Or do we se…
Read More
…, the former mayor of Malibu. A minority of the announcements suggest a mix-and-match approach (with, say, a Hindu officiant and a Vietnamese ceremony), but the vast majority just incant Rabbi X or Reverend Y with a telegram’s abbreviated breeze. At the end of the run (of genealogy, of professions, of pastors), it is hard not to wonder whether all this begetting does not diminish ritual potency, whether the rote rehearsal of genealogy affects the…
Read More