Religion Dispatches
…nd, at the time under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee for misuse of tax-deductible donor funds, claimed Huckabee was on his side because, in Huckabee’s words, Copeland was “trying to get prosperity to the people and they’re [Congress is] trying to take it away from ’em.” Such efforts to win the hearts of televangelists (and by extension, their audiences) date back to the early days of the first George H.W. Bush presidential campaign….
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…nversation about the appropriation of Buddhist practices is difficult, because as the tradition spread—from the Indian subcontinent, and across the globe—it always adapted to host cultures. Buddhism absorbed Chinese religion when it spread to China, Tibetan religion in Tibet, and so on. But mindfulness—what we think of as “meditation,” as opposed to prayer or ceremonial observance, for example—does have deep roots in the tradition. The Pali word s…
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…empathy occurs at a time when Obama has chosen a woman for the court. Because empathy is often improperly defined in terms of feeling and caring, it is more closely associated with women (who are, according to social prejudices, more emotional). This bias is used to question women’s ability to make effective, tough and fair-minded decisions. In comparison, so called “rational” approaches to adjudication tend to be associated with men, who are sup…
Read More…errible mixing’ … sick is to call for the downfall of Syria (sic.) not because its regime is undemocratic, but because its president is Alawite. What is sick, and nothing but sick, is that you don’t respect people and impose your opinions on them.” The Jerusalem Post reported that on Monday, June 15, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation “voted down a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against LGBT people in any way.” The legislat…
Read More…Christians are better than Christianity. They employ their personal moral code, choosing the moral morsels from the Bible that square with their contemporary sensibility. The Bible does not portray Jesus as a liberal powerhouse. Or at least, not solely as the man liberal Christians claim. We need look no further than hell to prove this point. Americans possess an unparalled degree of religious liberty, but Jesus promises eternal torture if they e…
Read More…ther, “I thought I should show him what noncooperation looks like,” and refused to move, she said. “When I refused to move, he dropped me to the floor and dragged me with the handcuffs.” Later, when she was being taken to court, police put leg shackles on her. A judge released her on the condition that she agree not to go to the Western Wall for any reason for 30 days or be fined 5,000 shekels. As Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of Rabbis fo…
Read More…“new age babble” and denial of moral distinctions: The protesters are confused. They reject morality clauses but call the archbishop’s behavior sinful, shameful, and wrong. They belong to a church but seem to think it shouldn’t forbid anything. They insist that no one can be judged, except for issuing judgments that contradict their own. They can’t explain or even acknowledge the moral differences between homosexuality, contraception, and abortio…
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…. I should not have to worry if someone will take my children from me because I am too controversial right now. I REFUSE to keep watching and reading of children taking their own lives because “good Christians” look the other way while their own children bully babies to death. UPDATE #6: Via Believe Out Loud’s blog, Hollie at the blog Satchel and Tea writes to Sojourners about why she decided not to subscribe to its magazine: “you don’t share my…
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…e that a change in the definition of marriage is unwarranted, not just because it is in opposition to the teaching of scripture and our Lord himself in Matthew 19,” he said “But because I believe marriage, traditionally understood as a union of one man and one woman, is a positive good for our society, where marriage and the procreation of children are bound together as the foundational fabric of our society, notwithstanding the sad reality that n…
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…ity in the relatively near future. So, if Euro-America is a lost Vatican cause, then where is the Church growing? Where is its future? The answer seems relatively clear. The Church is growing in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, and is even making significant inroads in the Far East. And what these emerging Catholic populations want is a culturally conservative theology (recall the uproar in these same regions when the openly gay Anglican bish…
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