Religion Dispatches
…together powerfully. If NBC uses the interview with Jones to help people understand conspiracy theories—how they work, to whom they appeal and why, and the reasons why they are not reliable interpretations of events—then airing it can be a responsible choice. Unfortunately, I suspect that’s unlikely to be the case….
Read More…symbol of something else entirely. The Republican Party, and even its most reliable base of support, the Christian right, is being forced to move on when it comes to the marriage issue. According to a 2014 Pew survey, 58 percent of Republican millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) favor gay marriage. A Public Religion Research Institute survey conducted last year found “white evangelical Protestant Millennials are more than twice as likely…
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…came liberal Catholics, who fiercely refuted any suggestion—often without reliable evidence or reportage—that the meeting had any importance, or, in some cases, that it even took place. They argued that news of the non-meeting was leaked by publicity-chasing conservative politicians and activists, like Davis’s attorney, Mat Staver, or that traditional-family-values conservatives in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had arranged the meeting…
Read More…separation thing as a matter of degrees. At all times there needs to be a reliable, unbiased medium of cross-communication. I said at all times. In this mosque there would be some sense that a problem such as broken speaker, missing cups and missing Maryams would be corrected because we do inhabit the world as well as the mosque— both men and women. For the larger issues, I think the separate spheres cannot be equal. Besides, I think we have some…
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…art was the retail reflection of its consumer base: frugal, courteous, and reliable. The fact that clerks and customers were neighbors and family members only enhanced the down-home feel. Most of the clerks were local women, happy to augment the family income with a little extra pay. Bringing their Christian values into the workplace, they sought to serve others selflessly and cheerfully. Moreover, as many were already familiar with the religious…
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…ws on religious liberty and LGBT rights, he may be one of the Court’s most reliable votes in favor of Phillips. Though Gorsuch decided relatively few gay rights cases during his eleven years on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, LGBT advocates expressed concern when President Donald Trump nominated him to the highest court in the land. Some pointed out that Gorsuch had written an op-ed for National Review in which he criticized liberals for an “o…
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…esidential election to fuse conservative Catholics and evangelicals into a reliable right-wing electoral bloc, delivered, appropriately, by a man who personifies the rise of evangelical Catholics or, in Pence’s case, catholic Evangelicals. Pence’s appearance, coming after 60 percent of white Catholic cast their vote for Trump, signals the end of anything that could remotely be called a cohesive Catholic laity in America. There are now three distin…
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… They’re too permissive, and they work far too many hours, and they’re not reliable, and they don’t limit screen time, and even the liberal ones do activism all wrong. She and her friends marched, way back in the day, and this is the thanks they get! Mrs. Peck is the sort of person who sincerely can’t fathom why poor people don’t wear natural fibers; take up yoga; or cook fresh, organic, locally-sourced produce every day. Religiously, Mrs. Peck ba…
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As growing numbers of career politicians and conservative pundits scramble to distance themselves from the ever-imploding presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, the foul-mouthed businessman still has a few reliable allies going to bat for him. And although Trump has seemed, at best, lukewarm about defending against the supposed “attack” on “Judeo-Christian values” in this nation, evangelicals and self-appointed religious freedom fighters conti…
Read More…s to be leveling off. 5. It might be compelling if there were any safe and reliable way to permanently turn most fat people into thin people. But there seems not to be. Of the people that lose a lot of weight, the vast majority—like nearly all of them—gain it back. Many have a little extra weight to show for their troubles. Some have seriously screwed-up metabolisms and attitudes about food. Oh, and it turns out that weight cycling (which, again,…
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