Religion Dispatches
…nd initiator of Proposition 8—the California ballot initiative that would strip gays of the right to marry. Here is some of what Bathija heard from Garlow: “When I find myself up past the midnight hour asking ‘why am I doing this?’ I think of the conversation that took place in Cairo, Egypt, between an Egyptian Christian pastor who has been severely persecuted by Islam and a man named Lou Engle” (Engle is the theocracy-minded founder of The Call,…
Read More…are, according to Pew, surprisingly high. Moreover, they represent a large number of people, “nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the United States” Accordingly, the 1-plus % of the Chinese population that identifies itself as Muslim equals some 20.3 million people—a population almost as large as Saudi Arabia’s. (More to the point, as one of China’s ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per fam…
Read More…mmitted to use my little bit of savings to pay for this once in a lifetime trip and then my sister dies suddenly leaving me the beneficiary of her life insurance policies. The cost for the trip was secured and as the year wore on I simply waited for my return to the US to begin my hunt for a travel agency to handle the details. My first question was about the visa. Having been stalled at the embassy when I tried to make hajj almost three decades a…
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…he President acted like “a drunk tourist… Loud and tacky, shoving his way around the dance floor.” Of this, too, there were photographs, and video clips. Much has been written on Trump as a “reality TV president,” from the way his background on The Apprentice helped him into the White House to how that show was echoed in the theatrics of the transition process to Trump’s continued reliance on the dramatic tricks of the genre—and even pieces collec…
Read More…Debra Nussbaum Cohen reports in Haaretz that following news of the Israel trip, the Southern Poverty Law Center highlighted AFA’s “extensive track record of bigotry and hate,” and urged RNC members to boycott the trip. (None have.) “Our issue is not with these folks going to Israel, which is an important ally and important for international policy,” Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project told Cohen. “Our issue is that one of o…
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…bleachers, and eight speakers lined up to address the crowd. The audience numbered about 30. Even Timothy Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, on the kickoff day of the Fortnight, only gathered 250 people. The nuns got that many in small towns across the country at stop after stop. The bus trip also proved that there is a deep hunger across generations for this kind of faith-based organizing. The crowd in DC was surprisingly younger…
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…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…
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…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
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…tries in Washington DC, who are already engaged with community organizing around economic justice issues. Jones’ community, which has the second-highest unemployment rate in the DC area, has been fighting a Wal-Mart in their neighborhood, pushing for a community benefit agreement with the retailer that would guarantee jobs for local residents who desperately need them. As a faith leader in an African-American congregation with a social gospel hist…
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…ed, applies here. These exchanges are neither surprising nor particularly groundbreaking. As Justice Breyer rightly observed, religion was lurking just under the surface of Tuesday’s arguments. Many disputes in recent years have involved claims that employers who hold certain religious beliefs deserve exemptions from generally applicable laws, including nondiscrimination laws designed to protect LGBTQ people. The Court’s 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop…
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