Religion Dispatches
…ce generally, the interactive reshaping of spiritual life mobile computing applications—apps—are taking up the creative slack in inviting believers, seekers, and non-believers of all stripes into what Meyers refers to as the “adventurous and always unpredictable exploration of God’s strange and surprising ways with the world.” Scholars and religion journalists are just beginning to address the impact of religious apps on the shaping of formal and…
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…ears in a row, as US policy evolved to support the country’s division into Sudan and South Sudan in 2010. But the law plays virtually no role in US policy toward Saudi Arabia, given that, for 15 years, the president has waived sanctions on the basis of US national security interests.) More recently, people generally mean that the US should engage “religious actors,” particularly groups on the ground in the Global South. Sometimes these groups are…
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…e opposite is true for the church in the Euro-Atlantic world. Johnson’s disappointment about the future of the Nigerian Church could best be applied to England, where fewer and fewer people attend church and surveys show young people don’t see the need for faith. The European Union’s constitution omits any mention of Christianity, the historic faith of the continent. Yet Europe still controls the leadership roles in the Church. The Pope and the Ar…
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…cultural conservatism in the United States. The foundation of this source code (the motherlode of the code, as it were) is Catholic natural law moral philosophy. Natural law is the 800-year-old Thomist tradition that absorbs (from revelation and scripture) and communicates (into public discourse and legal practice) a quite specific understanding of the human individual as the summit of God’s creation. First Things has hosted some of the most impo…
Read More…ansgender issues. Over the past couple of years, however, Pope Francis has appeared to approach the sexuality question—and to a lesser degree the gender identity question—with more openness than previous Pontiffs, and even in marked departure from the views expressed by Pope Francis when he was still Archbishop of Buenos Aires. In 2010, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, described same-sex marriage as the work of the…
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…ck in 1996, according to a document reprinted by Bussmann, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments knew exactly where Catholic school girls kidnapped by the LRA were being held. The Ugandan army had been tipped that the LRA was going to attack the elite St. Mary’s school, but had done nothing to protect or to rescue the 139 girls abducted. And yet, a brave school administrator, Sister Rachele, almost singlehandedly gained the release of 109 of the ch…
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…ke away that free will, except for those who have the capacity to hack the code and reprogram the car. We normally think of robots as almost pure code, yet the scene last week when Graystone orders the Zoebot to rip off her arm raises some interesting stakes in this. It seems to me that people may be treating the Cylons differently depending on what mix of code and law they believe governs their behavior. And of course, those of you who study reli…
Read More…be noted that in a kind of harmonic convergence of BS, the “Biblical Money Code” appears as a fake news article, or “advertorial,” on Newsmax, the semi-fake news website. Hyman in fact seems to work for the website, although his actual role is unclear—a recent bio says that he is part of its “Financial Brain Trust.” “A wise man looks well into a matter,” Proverbs, and Hyman, reminds us. While I wouldn’t make any claims to wisdom, I will say that I…
Read More…toning under a portion of the oil-rich Southeast Asian country’s new penal code based on Islamic Shariah law that is slated to take effect next year. Gambian lawmakers last month approved a measure that would impose a life sentence upon anyone found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality.” The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is among the groups that have urged Chadian President Idriss Déby to reject a proposed amendment to his c…
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…,” she adds. The lawyers have referred to Article 98 of the Egyptian Penal Code as justification for their demands of imprisoning the author. In an open statement to the Egyptian General Prosecutor, they called for the author to be tried for “contempt of the Christian religion and verbal abuse of Copts.” Naguib Gobrail, one of the lawyers and President of the Egyptian Human Rights Federation, has argued that “Muslims attack Christians in as many w…
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