Religion Dispatches
….” As well, there are people who have explicitly chosen not to live in The City. Expats from the city, some wealthy, some less so, settle in the country. Most of these folks carry that “responsibility” frame of reference, which they link to the downsides of living in a city: noise, crime, asshole neighbors. There are also many people who grew up in the country and have decided to remain, or return after a few years away. Between the two groups, th…
Read More…values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.” That from the good Cardinal who once said, “You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the…
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…The two scenarios couldn’t be more different. The Lukumi case involved the City of Hialeah, which held an emergency session of the City Council in a “mob atmosphere” just weeks after the Santeria church tried to open. The president of the city council asked: “What can we do to prevent the Church from opening?” The city attorney said in the meeting that “This community will not tolerate religious practices which are abhorrent to its citizens,” sent…
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…and RHOSLC doesn’t just float around in the group texts of effete New York City gays like myself. Particularly Heather’s and Whitney’s plot lines deal explicitly with open and unsettled questions about what it means to be a real Mormon woman; both struggle with what they feel is a judgmental culture which enforces impossible standards. Whitney had the Mormon hammer come down on her after her extramarital affair came to light, leaving her with some…
Read More…stions about the quality of patient care at publicly funded clinics in the city. Doris Fernandes, a long-time pediatrician with one of the city’s eight health clinics that serve low-income patients, sued the city in 2013, claiming that it fired her for refusing to comply with an initiative to promote the use of emergency contraceptives and long-acting contraceptives in adolescent populations at high risk for unintended pregnancy. Fernandes, who is…
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…per day and imprisonment if they refuse to perform same-sex weddings. The city hasn’t actually made any moves to enforce the ordinance, nor has it intimated that it will. The city’s attorney has suggested that refusing to marry gay couples at a for-profit wedding chapel would probably violate the law, but he’s been hesitant about it. The strongest statement he made was when he said he thought, “in theory,” that turning away a same-sex couple woul…
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…found.” In stark contrast to New Rochelle, a week earlier when a New York City woman who lived in Manhattan tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from Iran, health officials assured residents of New York City that the risks were very low and there was no need for quarantine measures. As New York Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a public press conference,“While we hoped this moment wouldn’t come, it was something we prepared for. A…
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…High School (St. Louis), Georgetown (Washington, D.C.) or the Rock Church (Kansas City)? To those closeted gay priests and seminarians who consecrate the Eucharist and who pray for peace and mercy, the time has come to, as Jesus did, to flip the tables in places of worship, to come out. Be the voices crying out in the wilderness, pray for the courage to virtuously identify yourself as gay, to no longer practice the Church’s policy of “don’t ask, d…
Read More…Hallel, a house of prayer modeled on the International House of Prayer in Kansas City; and Tom Hess, who operates the Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations on the Mount of Olives. “We have a list that keeps growing,” said Jesse. He said that Dan Juster, the director of Tikkun Ministries International who also oversees the activities of the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute in Israel, was trying to make the meeting. The MJBI in Israel did not r…
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…r streaming a 24-hour worship chapel online (International House of Prayer Kansas City). In time, I think the pandemic will prove significant in changing the way people attend church. More and more, people are following pastors they find on social media who align with their particular interests and have good digital infrastructure. As for the networks, Flory and Christerson have done great work in this area. There’s been a real exodus from denomin…
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