Religion Dispatches
…further why even when so few Muslims do resort to violent actions, a good number of their co-religionists are reluctant to entirely dismiss them. Indeed, many more Muslims protested peacefully against “The Innocence of Muslims” than did violently, even though their numbers together were still incredibly small. In his introduction to Sufism for Non-Sufis?, University of Southern California Professor Sherman Jackson notes that we cannot separate Is…
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…social statement adopted by the 2009 churchwide assembly). Alongside these official studies has been a growing sense among Lutherans that the official policy denying ordination to non-celibate gay and lesbian persons might be a fundamental injustice. Three groups in particular have been at the forefront of these discussions. Lutherans Concerned/North America and Goodsoil have been tireless advocates for the full inclusion of LGBTQ Lutherans into t…
Read More…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…
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…as been a success story, writes Sieff, with the HIV/AIDS rate dropping from 12 percent to 5 percent since 2002 while the number of people receiving treatment has more than doubled in five years to over 700,000. But the new anti-gay crackdown could frighten people away from receiving treatment. Even though Tanzania’s penal code refers to homosexuality as a “gross indecency,” the government had long permitted organizations to help gay men who had AI…
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…year as never before. Today Americans are voting. May all be guided by the spirit of love and wisdom in our choices. And when the polls close, may the spirit of love and wisdom continue to prevail in our reactions to the outcome—no matter who wins. In elections there are winners and losers, but we all lose if the winners fail to reach out to their fellow citizens who voted in the minority. May we move forward together. In your many names we pray….
Read More…ction, invoked the memory of Winston Churchill while trying to buoy up the spirit of the GOP faithful. “The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters,” Minnery said. “You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler’s Luftwaffe that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to t…
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…unusual, what does that say about the Church? Fraser emerges from this as a potentially important religious figure. For he is a serious thinker as well as an affable bloke. The Church of England has lacked a major liberal voice in recent years. Since 9/11 especially, a spirit of cultural conservatism has reigned among the bishops, a reluctance to expose the established Church to searching criticism. But it is only through such self-criticism that…
Read More…s Burning”—the very hymn our ancestors sang to dedicate the Kirtland temple 175 years ago, in 1836, on a day when, as the folklore goes, neighboring villages reported seeing a cloud of fire hovering over Kirtland. Standing in the sunlit white interiors of the temple, Liam, a young gay LDS man who had travelled all the way from London just to take part in the conference, wept openly. His mind was on the leadership of his Church, the Church of Jesus…
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…nd host of others have their own books, too.) The roadshow purports to be a 1908 revival (with a 2008 message) that reminds audiences of the power and glory that led Spirit-filled revivalists to hit the sawdust trail. I missed the roadshow when it played in Los Angeles, but the music, costumes and old-timey shtick appeal to the historian in me. The journalist who also abides would have liked to know who’s in the audience (is it reaching beyond the…
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…uttmacher Institute. Thirty-five percent of Texas women between the ages of 15 and 44 are uninsured, 13% higher than the national rate. Texas also has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than the national average, 88 pregnancies per 1,000 teen women, compared with 70 per 1,000 nationally. Yet in the face of this, the Texas legislature slashed family planning funding by two-thirds in 2011. The Republican-led legislature allocated another $8.4 million o…
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