Religion Dispatches
…stential questions that have underwritten all the religions—and most civil codes of law—throughout human history: Who am I? What am I serving that will outlive me and carry my love and my work forward? How should I live so that when I look back on my life, whether a year or decades from now, I can honestly be glad I’ve lived the way I did? Theologians, ministers, and active congregants may say, correctly, that their religions still offer some resp…
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…same Torah and commentaries, study the same Talmud, live by the same legal codes, and adhere to the same basic belief system. Yes, the haredim have a very narrow reading of these sources but it’s a safe bet that they can cite chapter and verse to support their views—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The k…
Read More…s. India: Materials targeting adolescents challenge gender stereotypes and promote respect The Health Secretary published materials designed to be used by adolescent peer educators on health issues. The materials aim to dispel gender stereotypes and promote relationships based on respect, reports Abantika Ghosh in The Indian Express: The legality of homosexuality may still be an open question for the judiciary and the Government is yet to change t…
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…world—Godly Christianity and godless secular humanism. From their base in Switzerland at the L’Abri Fellowship which they founded, Schaeffer and his wife Edith issued book after book calling for an intellectual revival of Christian activists. Their son Frank made a series of well-crafted and visually powerful films featuring his father and pediatric neonatal surgeon C. Everett Koop making equally powerful intellectual arguments about why Protesta…
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…parents (Francis and Edith Schaeffer who founded the ministry of L’Abri in Switzerland) went through. We became members of ever “purer” churches through one “separation” after another, until the “True Church” more or less boiled down to just our family! In The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, French philosopher André Comte-Sponville tries to present a “humanitarian foundation” for the life of unbelief. Comte-Sponville says that his “way of bei…
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…tated during my hearing, I strongly believe that the US should unabashedly promote American values. If confirmed, I will work to advance human rights for everyone.” Likewise, Senator Shaheen asked, “If confirmed, will you work to further the rights of LGBT individuals around the world? Will you continue U.S. participation in the LGBT core group? What other actions will you take to further this important issue?” Ambassador Haley answered, “As I sta…
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…ncing (and becoming) themSelves. Denied tenure (eventually overturned) and promotion to full professor, and forced into retirement, the longtime Boston College professor’s career spanned world transformations of Roman Catholicism, higher education, and American culture’s treatment of women. Beginning with her degrees from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she was the first woman to receive a theological degree, through her witnessin…
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…an episcopal perspective and the later (completed by Protestant exiles in Switzerland escaping the persecutions of the Catholic Queen Mary) was explicitly Calvinist. The King James companies worked at integrating the orientations of these two editions, but they also had the profound literary example of William Tyndale, who finished the first complete English translation of the New Testament (an accomplishment which led to his execution in 1536)….
Read More…esident Joe Biden addressed a group of business leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum and urged them to do more to advance LGBT equality, saying there is never a cultural justification for human rights violations: “LGBT people face violence, harassment, unequal treatment, mistreatment by cops, denial of health care, isolation — always in the name of culture,” said Biden as the Huffington Post reported. “I’ve had it up…
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…d to be a human sacrifice at the CERN nuclear research facility in Geneva, Switzerland. Footage taken at night from a CERN office shows a cabal of cloaked figures standing around a statue of Shiva (a gift from the Department of Atomic Energy of India). A woman in white is brought forward and stabbed, prompting the anonymous cameraman to flee in terror. The Telegraph noted the cameraman’s reflection in the office window suggests that he is also wea…
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