Religion Dispatches
…their realms. The Gulf countries’ embrace of the avowedly secular Egyptian military and the Azhar elite’s support of the military coup unhinges the usual assumptions about religious and secular alliances in the Arab world. Morsi’s supporters largely drawn from the Muslim Brotherhood have also resorted to religious rhetoric to attempt to galvanize popular opposition to the military. They regard their political resistance as a justified jihad agains…
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…s did 100% of those employed in non-ordained roles and 50% of congregation members. The survey also found that transgender and non-binary respondents were victimized at higher rates than their cisgender counterparts across a range of inappropriate behaviours. To cite just one example: 39% disclosed inappropriate touching or closeness, compared to 27.2% of cisgender women and 16.4% of cisgender men. The survey organizers caution that the data they…
Read More…ld by those who oppose the effort to create this resource for nonreligious members of the military. Perkins suggests that nonreligious chaplains are a “bizarre” idea, adding that “by definition, a chaplain’s duties are to offer prayer, spiritual counseling, and religious instruction.” The confusion surrounding chaplains for the nonreligious isn’t new—or especially surprising. The popular connotations of the word chaplain are clearly religious; m…
Read More…in the military—as in the case of racial and LGBT quality—it will likely have significant impact on the American culture more broadly as service members move back and forth between military and civilian life….
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…And if we don’t know… how do you think it might? Imprecatory prayer among members of the military takes on a much more threatening aspect if it occurs in combination with certain other potentially lethal trends. One of these is the very real recruitment of members of the military, both active and former, into far-right belief systems. For instance, we know for a fact that neo-Nazi and white-supremacist organizations have made an active effort not…
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…y measures, i.e., censure, repentance, counseling, etc. in place).” 54% of members believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. Jehovah’s Witnesses Members (as of 2010): 1,184,249 Jehovah’s Witnesses consider homosexuality a sin. According to the denomination’s website, “The Bible condemns sexual activity that is not between a husband and wife, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual conduct. This includes intercourse, fondling another…
Read More…hip. It’s not ironic that many Egyptians don’t care. It’s disgusting. The military went after Copts at Maspero, and few said anything. (While, we should add, the Brotherhood was at least ostensibly in charge.) Now they’ve gone after the most organized political opposition in the country, killing hundreds and wounding thousands—blood spilled is not soon forgotten. The Egyptian military’s crackdown on the Brotherhood in decades past left us with Sa…
Read More…e members. I wonder how many gays and lesbians of faith are serving in the military who may feel that they can’t speak freely to a military chaplain about their faith for fear of getting a lecture on their “immorality.” What about their right to speak freely about religion and what it means to them? The military is a microcosm of the larger society in many ways, and how they deal with any repeal of DADT will be instructive to watch. In the general…
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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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…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…
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