Religion Dispatches
…terials intended to promote this perspective, as well as the starkly delineated gender norms and expectations upon which this view is based. I’d be willing to bet the t-shirt will be showing up at homeschool conventions across the country this spring….
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…rends continue, perhaps we can look forward to the day when the word “values” is no longer used in political campaigns as a code word for bigotry….
Read More…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
Read More…giveness for ways we might have added to your pain.” “We’re hoping to do a better job of talking to and loving each other and holding true to our scriptural principles,” said Jane Higa, the school’s vice president for student life. That doesn’t mean the school’s policy will be changing anytime soon, though. Administrators say the ban is not on being gay but on the “practice”—just as there’s a ban on sex between unmarried straight students. In Higa…
Read More…, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bible Answer Man” Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute, tuning in like clockwork to his show weekdays 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Washington DC’s WAVA 105.1. Still, as much as I appreciated (and occasionally even found inspiring) these programs’ message of sel…
Read More…ddressed. “It is up to us to convince them that this change is one for the better.” Augustinian priest Iggy O’Donovan went public with his plans to support marriage equality, in spite of the Church’s opposition. Fr Iggy O’Donovan told The Irish Independent this week that he was an ‘an absolute believer in Catholic teaching on marriage.’ ‘[But I also] accept that there are people with different but deeply held views to me and I respect their views…
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…d I realize I don’t care. • Riding the volume knob, I split the difference between waking my parents and coaxing all the ecstasy I can from the TV’s tin-can speaker. I don’t know how to take this I don’t see why he moves me He’s a man He’s just a man Should I bring him down Should I scream and shout Should I speak of love Let my feelings out? I never thought I’d come to this What’s it all about? —Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, “I Don’t Know How…
Read More…e made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. “If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion.” Here is the bill in its entirety: FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA: Section 1. Th…
Read More…e cis-het patriarchy and want the world to receive it as a universal moral code. They would be just as happy if you didn’t notice that they can only provide one particular interpretation of the gospel, rather than an objective and unchanging truth. To boot, it’s an interpretation that isn’t even fully shared by other conservative religious groups, nor is it without controversy even within the Southern Baptist Convention. Take, for example, the que…
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…cal Christians in a December 10 article: The evangelical movement is split between those conservative Christians who suspect that climate change is an evil secular plot, concocted by the devil, Al Gore and “the global government crowd”—in the words of Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher—and those who passionately believe that good Christians need to be good custodians of the planet. Two years ago I went to Liberty University in Virginia, the h…
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