Religion Dispatches
…es. I remember only one thing she said, that I would make hajj in the next year or two. This year I made my intentions during the previous hajj season. As I have said, I committed 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…
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…in destabilizing both. “He fooled me every single day,” his ex-wife, Dorie Olds, confesses. But what does it mean that so many people believed him? “Does that mean we’re all living lies?” asks Flynn. It’s a big question. Hofmann, a man who has lost his faith in the religion of his forefathers, takes pleasure in undercutting the certainty of others. “It’s not so much what’s genuine and what isn’t,” he reasons, “but what people consider is genuine.”…
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…are unaffiliated. Further, in terms of percentages, twice as many 18 to 29 year olds (31%) as 50-64 year olds (11%) is unaffiliated. But, though Boomers make up a smaller number of the unaffiliated than do either GenXers or Millennials, there are a lot of them. So yes, younger people are more likely than Americans over 30 to be unaffiliated, but—counter-intuitively, perhaps—there are more unaffiliated among the over-30 population. In the end, I ca…
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…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….
Read More…ntisemitic loon who’s been showing up at protests in the New York area for years now. None of them had the ‘human mic.’ None of them were in any kind of non-leadership leadership position. Surely, anyone who knows anything about the protests – which includes ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American J…
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…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …
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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…
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…ffiliation by checking “D: none of the above.” Mostly composed of 18-to-34-year-olds, this cohort sees affiliation with a religious institution to be neither necessary nor desirable, even if they are looking to do good work in the world, or to remain “spiritual but not religious.” Rob Bell may not have a building any more, but he does have a space—or rather, many spaces. For this latest book, he’s going on what he calls a “living room” tour. On Ap…
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…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
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…far Le Pen’s supporters will carry her in the April 23-May 7 vote, several years of polls have shown the National Front is now more popular with the LGBT voters who make up 6.5 percent of the French electorate than it is with straight voters. LePen’s Party, which includes a number of openly gay officials, still pledges to roll back the marriage equality law in favor of civil unions. As AP notes, LePen is not the only nationalist leader who uses fe…
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