Religion Dispatches
…ps, dresses, and scarves. I feel like I need one more scarf. Not for sheer number, but for style; there are so many styles, and one has to decide what works best individually. I have my long prayer scarves that do not need any pins to be neatly kept in place. But they are really long, and I wish I had at least one as neat, but shorter. I want to be hands-free and secure at the same time. I have long rectangular shapes that get draped, and I will u…
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…he same Bible out of which my conservative brothers and sisters pull these cheap one-liners to control the conversation about reproductive health also shows us the life and ministry of Jesus—whom we all claim to follow. The Jesus of the Gospel always treated poor people and people in crisis with compassion, never judgement. I don’t understand how you can claim to model yourself on Jesus while seeking to constantly judge and shame and limit people….
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…e Americans with disabilities being hauled off by Capitol cops, and to the numberless people standing against legal authority that suspects them for the crime of simply being black or Muslim or queer? If we think about Catonsville not just as a curiosity, a minor episode in the history of radical chic, but as a provocation or a template, what do we learn? Must Americans burn something to get attention? Must religious protesters be arrested? Many c…
Read More…d that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion. He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video’s purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula’s address. —- For more RD coverage of the events in Libya see “Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuses,” by Haroon Moghul — ed….
Read More…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…
Read More…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…
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…TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houle. “The state carried out a ‘typical’ number of executions in a record amount of time—averaging nearly one per week over a five-month period. Yet officials’ zeal for executions was not matched by public desire for new death sentences, as evidenced by the continued steep decline in the number of new inmates arriving on death row.” TCADP also pointed to some hard-earned victories over the past year, particularly…
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…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…
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…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…
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…ential material,” said Mpofu. “Oh yeah,” echoes Bourland. “In my heart, I just begin to pray, God, let this woman rise to this place that you want her to go,” said Mpofu. “Number one, she’s a Christian. Number two, she’s a woman.” Watch a short video montage of the conference here. —Ed….
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