Religion Dispatches
…ll be out in 2011 from FSG. Last August, I was sitting outside at a coffee shop, and it popped into my head that if my mother were still alive, I’d probably be at home in Rhode Island helping her with the annual survival kit-making event in my family. My Mom was a nursery school teacher and every year she made these parent survival kits, which were a series of symbolic items she’d place inside a paper lunch bag, designed to help parents manage thi…
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…n Orlando, after the Pulse massacre, when a fast-food worker kept a Subway shop open for two days straight to house small-media journalists. She teared up when, after apologizing for needing to close the restaurant for 30 minutes to clean, she got a standing ovation. I see it in the water protectors at Standing Rock, who have met brutal force with peaceful, steadfast prayer. I see it in the beautiful faces of the nation’s original occupants as the…
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…gs I expect,” he said. In 2001 when the Church of Uganda discovered that Bishop Senyonjo was working with gays and lesbians, he was expelled and stripped of his pension. Local papers accused him of being motivated by money from American gay groups, being gay himself, and “recruiting” children into homosexuality and threats of mob justice got so bad that the bishop was forced to stay in the U.S. for six months. Despite the persecution, he has conti…
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…o the police. Instead, a culture of extreme secrecy has prevailed, codified in Vatican norms issued in 1962 requiring secret investigations and prohibiting any report to civil authorities. Will Pope Benedict XVI set in motion any change to canon law? Will he step down or ask any complicit bishops to resign? Will he even order a Church-wide investigation? Unlikely. Instead, his moral authority will continue to erode. The number of priests will cont…
Read More…om to participate fully in society. The ability to enter public places, to shop, to dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry.” The couple in the Sweetcakes case were only able to bring their case, though, because Oregon has laws protecting against sexual orientation discrimination in public accommodations. Most states do not, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Oregon, along with 16 other states, prohibit discrimination in public accommodatio…
Read More…d scene in horror movies for a reason, I solemnly entered the hospital wig shop where a very nice lady working in the shadows somewhere between “beauty” and “death” shaved my head. She did it in a special curtained-off cubicle because I didn’t want to see it in the mirror. “How many brothers do you have?” she said, as she worked. “Four,” I answered. “I knew it by the scars!” she said. Our bodies bear all kinds of secrets, from our scalps to secret…
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…ning guide.) Last week, The Cubit caught up with Bivins at a Durham coffee shop to discuss jazz, religion, and science, and to ask whether jazz musicians represent the ultimate in “Spiritual But Not Religious” (SBNR). You write that “religion” and “jazz” are both tricky categories to write about, and that they’re tricky for similar reasons. The similarity is what ended up surprising me, and it’s not how I started the project. My initial interest…
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…as readers that we strive to practice in the rest of life. Just as we can shop or eat ethically, we can read ethically. And selfish reading is training for selfish action, because it teaches us to use others as means to our own ends. For all his good works, Warren is also using his huge authority to promote a culture of selfishness—and he is in good company among America’s most popular religious leaders. I’ve focused on his abuse of Daniel not be…
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…tells the story of the time he was reading Isis Unveiled in a local coffee shop. He was approached by a very excited man with an interest in Theosophy and other sorts of New Thought systems who talked his ear off for an hour. My friend is Catholic and was reading the book as a bit of research for some project or another. The encounter between my Catholic friend and the enthusiastic Theosophist sums up why I feel uncomfortable on airplanes. I don’t…
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…dency to “claw on the carpet” while being dragged from the past; retired bishop Otis Charles and his husband Felipe; and Bishop Tom Shaw, an openly gay celibate Episcopal monk. But the crowd favorite at the DC screening I attended was Bishop Barbara Harris, whose 1989 consecration as the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion also shook up the church. Harris is memorably direct. About the idea that Robinson is the first gay bishop, Harris s…
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