Religion Dispatches
…sses in the Hamptons (which includes early class signups) runs for $4,000. New York magazine interviewed one New York City rider who, by the magazine’s estimate, was spending more than $21,000 on SoulCycle each year. A single class, sans early sign-up perks, costs nearly as much as a month-long membership at my local YMCA. Meanwhile, back on SoulCycle’s website, instructors describe their work in frankly spiritual language. Here’s the lightly cond…
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…d what other people their age did—with the exception, of course, of sexual contact. The chaste life, whether permanent or for a specified period of time, was meant to free those who practiced it to live more deliberately, to cultivate habits of empathy and compassion. Almost everything we know about the Covenanters comes from St. Ephrem the Syrian (307-373). Pious tradition reinvents Ephrem as a monk, a deacon, or a theologian. He was none of thes…
Read More…This is because society recognises the importance of the setting in which new human life, new members of society come into existence. “It is of vital importance to society that the definition of marriage is protected, sustained and supported.” India: Couple’s high-profile marriage in defiance of anti-gay law BuzzFeed reported last week on a gay couple that was married in a religious ceremony at the end of January. “A Sanskrit teacher conducted th…
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…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
Read More…Europe to make divorce legal, which it did by referendum in 2011. Brunei: New Law Allows Death by Stoning for Homosexuality, Other Offenses Next week a new law goes into effect in Brunei which will allow gay people and others to be stoned to death. The maximum penalty for homosexuality had been a 10-year prison sentence. “Rape, adultery, sodomy, extramarital sexual relations for Muslims, insulting any verses of the Quran and Hadith, blasphemy, de…
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…sts as newsworthy. In 1981, when physician Lawrence Mass wrote a story for New York Native, a small gay newspaper, the disease did not even have a name. Several weeks later, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported an outbreak of a rare cancer among a handful of gay men in Los Angeles. Soon after, mainstream news outlets briefly reported the findings but despite its rapid spread, the cancer, which would be identified as AIDS, did not receive…
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…conferences, US visitors were flown in to teach the missionaries about ‘a new cutting-edge paradigm’ for mission… The new paradigm entailed that missionaries had to ‘identify’ and ‘bind territorial spirits’ and ‘unleash’ divine power. Evangelism was to be preceded by ‘prayer walks,’ and prayer was considered best if done geographically ‘on-site,’ within a ‘target area.’ Prayer became the identification of and confrontation with demons… All of thi…
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…is latest wonderful aphorism. If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: “Freedom is better than non-freedom”, then, thanks to Medvedev’s felicitous saying, Putin’s third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism: “Prison is better than stoning.” I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th century. He wrote: “You are holding your opinions in too high a regard if…
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…65% of its courthouses, city halls, and sewage-disposal plants; 35% of its new public-health facilities; 10% of all of new roads, bridges, tunnels and subways, in addition to large dams, airports and recreational facilities. The first effort to provide affordable housing for the working poor was undertaken by the PWA. The second approach was to establish public employment programs for needy workers in which the government itself acted as the emplo…
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…e large-scale organizations that successfully planted churches in multiple numbers of New York City’s public schools, and the numbers grew quickly. During the 2010-2011 school year, the Department of Education said 160 congregations were granted permits for worship services. The new churches valued not just the free real estate, but also the proximity to children and families, and the credibility provided by their new physical setting. Owing to th…
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