Religion Dispatches
…s were an increasingly popular form of birth control. When the Vatican complained, the sisters explained it was a matter of good medical practice to provide the procedure for women who wanted it immediately after childbirth rather than have them go to another hospital later for a separate procedure, which increased their health risks. Instead of listening to the nuns about what was in the best interests of the women they cared for, the Vatican thr…
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…ade. The Reproductive Health law that restored government-financed family planning services was popularly supported by Filipinos but stymied for years by the politically powerful Catholic bishops. Who exactly was doing the colonizing here? But the bigger irony is that in almost the same breath, Francis demanded greater attention to women’s voices in the church: Women have a lot of things to say to us in today’s society. Sometimes we’re too chauvin…
Read More…id. Asia: IGLHRC Report on Anti-LBT Violence in Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka This week the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission released an in-depth report on violence against lesbian and bisexual women and trans people in Asia. Research teams working in five countries conducted 370 interviews, 230 with LBT people who had experience violence and the others with stakeholders such as lawyers, mental health profe…
Read More…les who have been married in a civil ceremony – according either to New Zealand law, or to the law in the Pacific Island nations which form part of this church. These liturgies also create a pathway for the people in such relationships to become ordained. Civil marriages between a man and a woman have long been recognised in law in both New Zealand and in those Pacific Island nations. In New Zealand’s case, of course, an amendment to marriage law…
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…ves have done a lot of serious work on the importance of fidelity in all relationships and the difference between fully-realized relationships that participate in the sacred vs. liaisons that fall short of that mark. Religious progressives, after all, are the ones who have tried to enrich, not degrade, the marriage sacrament by arguing that God blesses all deeply committed marriage bonds, not just marriages made by heterosexuals. What progressive…
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…d Wimber to leave. Wagner, as a tenured professor, continued to teach the class with lay persons, which also became problematic. It was in the late 1980s, however, when Wagner turned to “spiritual mapping.” One of the first books that outlined spiritual mapping was Breaking Strongholds in Your City: How to Use Spiritual Mapping to Make your Prayers More Strategic, Effective and Targeted, published in 1993. Wagner’s spiritual mapping started in Pas…
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…the first notes congratulating Trump came from an enthusiastic Duterte in Manila who only weeks earlier called Barack Obama a “son of a whore.” Now that the have-nots have become the new haves, and the forgotten masses have claimed a voice, where does this leave us, the forebears of a globalized multicultural world? It probably leaves us where we always have been, even though we may not have realized it, as part of a privileged minority with a vi…
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…ld view of other peoples,” Bishop Badejo concluded… Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila has noted that foreign aid given to the Philippines is oftentimes is linked to some measures that the receiving country is somehow forced to accept … some of the conditions for the aid seem to be an acceptance or a welcoming of some views regarding marriage, or sexuality, or what, which could be alien to the vision of the receiving country or culture.” We reported la…
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…side Episcopal churches—they experience them within Episcopal churches at alarmingly high rates, too. And the denomination’s structures (canon law included) have consistently failed to protect them. New data reveals the scope of the abuse crisis Buried deep in the Reports to the General Convention are the results of a survey, conducted in 2020, that quantifies the violence epidemic. Based on a similar survey conducted in 2017 amongst United Method…
Read More…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
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