Religion Dispatches
…sm by using an (often liberal) Orientalist approach to covering the Middle East or South Asia. For example, on March 5, 2008, as the death toll due to Israeli attacks in Gaza was mounting, the New York Times chose to publish an article just below its report on the Israeli military incursions that focused on the sentencing of a Palestinian man in Israel for an honor killing; the report was deemed worthy of international coverage because the Palesti…
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…ants to work in coalition with Christian evangelicals, perhaps it would be better to start by talking with Progressive Idealists, the religious left, and a variety women’s rights and gay rights activist groups to line up our support. Then together we can analyze the source of the ideological opposition (in this case the Christian Right) and develop a counter-frame. Finally, we can reach out to moderate and mildly conservative evangelicals using ou…
Read More…s would be arrested and prosecuted. Lokodo said the parade was designed to promote homosexuality to young people. “We are aware that there are inducements, including money, being offered to young people to promote the practice,” he said. Lawyer Nicholas Opiyo said he believed the minister was unaware that parade organizers had formally notified police of their intention to hold a public gathering. “In terms of the legal procedure, they ticked all…
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…located near Mumbai and Westerner-friendly. In fact, both had developed an East-West hybridity that extended from Americans in key leadership roles to a spiritual eclecticism with room for Jesus, New Age and Zen. So after flying 20-plus hours from Los Angeles to Mumbai and driving another eight hours to Pune, I’d dropped half of the students at the rural Ananda retreat and alighted at Osho with the rest. The Osho International Meditation Resort is…
Read More…arian Ali Motahari as asking “why the West is moving toward animalism, and promoting affairs such as homosexuality that go against the human nature?” Chile: Marriage equality opponent wins presidential election; Congress will have pro-equality majority Sebastián Piñera, Chile’s president between 2010 and 2014, will return to office in March after winning a runoff election in December. Piñera is an opponent of marriage equality for same-sex couples…
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….” This kind of talk can turn the world upside down. We are surrounded by beasts and dragons right out of the book of Revelation, and we fan their flames with our faith. Consequently Stringfellow’s God is not just a character to whom we must defer to for the sake of some future salvation, nor some almighty therapist. God is the means for inhabiting a world filled with mighty principalities and powers. Stringfellow clings to the promise that “Jesus…
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…elivered—dissent and approval, femininity and righteousness and pleasure—encoded the proceedings with a special kind of attention, another layer to Supreme Court ritual. Those fabric beacons shone powerfully for those of us who have experienced marginalization, had to code switch from setting to setting, or learned to express ourselves through subtle cues beyond formal language. While it’s not a huge surprise that some of Ginsburg’s collars will r…
Read More…rriage into the country’s constitution, which currently refers to marriage between “partners” without specifying gender. The statement comes amid concerns from some that the conservative East European nation will align with other EU nations and permit gay marriage. Romania currently does not recognize marriages between people of the same sex. The church, to which more than 85 percent of Romanians belong, said Friday it supports a recent proposal m…
Read More…ted on 2,279 residents of Lusaka, Zambia and found that the vast majority (between 55% and 92%) of new infections in Lusaka occur in long-term serodiscordant relationships. The researchers estimate that voluntary HIV testing for long-term married or cohabitating serodiscordant couples accompanied by counseling on risk reduction and condom use would reduce the annual incidence rate of new infections from 20% to 7%. This simple intervention would pr…
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…, 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 bishop, Gene Robinson, was confirmed). The code word for most of that uproar is “anti-Modern.” So the irony of Catholic anti-Modernism multiplies, morphs, turns back on itself. The logic of Catholic anti-Modernis…
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