Religion Dispatches
…kers is the worst possible remedy. But this doesn’t mean that many middle-class and working-class Americans, including many who consider themselves free of any residual Puritanism, don’t buy into the new austerity. Obama’s response so far to Romney’s Austerity/Prosperity Gospel: “Do the math.” The professor’s answer to the preacher. But Mr. President, with respect: Your own Education Department will affirm my suggestion that we are no longer the…
Read More…t lane. [ZOA president Mort] Klein gave Adelson a gift mezuzah for his new Las Vegas home (in which “God himself would be happy to live if he could afford it”] then Miriam Adelson told the audience “how I fell in love” with Hagee “the most effective Christian Zionist in the world” and then Hagee described the Adelsons as “the greatest citizens of America.” And the crowd kvelled. The extravagant accolades did not end there. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), wh…
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…earing T-shirts with a verse from Psalm 95 on their backs—En su mano están las profundidades de la tierra; suyas son las alturas de los montes (In his hand are the depths of the Earth and the mountain peaks belong to him)—the miners’ bodies themselves enacted a liturgy of grace and thanksgiving that gathered millions throughout the day to live feeds from the mine shaft to computers, laptops, and smartphones around the world. Millions, likewise, pa…
Read More…e often caricatured as a “red bishop” who preached a communist message of class struggle that supported the armed Zapatistas, Bishop Ruiz consistently espoused a vision of nonviolence and peaceful mediation. In 1999 he founded the Father Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre and his life as a whole reminds us that the Latin American Church has been and still is the Church of the Poor. Bishops Ruiz’s death marks the passing of yet another prie…
Read More…m his home in East Helena, Montana, to a predominantly Mormon community in Las Vegas, Nevada, so that he could be surrounded by LDS people. He served in the Church, attended LDS temple services, worked for a Church-owned bookstore, got engaged to a woman, and prayed earnestly that he’d feel the same kind of attraction to her as he did to men. “But one day in the temple,” Cox says, “I got the impression I was asking for the wrong thing: that I shou…
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…tion figure who made national news at the Atlanta protests when he, then a Las Vegas police officer, publicly changed sides and was arrested alongside Weslin. Gallagher was launched on a career of clinic blockades, and today serves as the local leader of Las Vegas’ Operation Save America—a group notorious for distributing “wanted”-style posters of abortion providers, an act that has been judged in federal appeals court as an implicit death threat….
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…as,” the United Church of Bacon (UCB) placed a holiday themed billboard in Las Vegas, Nevada featuring two strips of bacon hiteheadearing a Santa hat and a Star of David respectively. This billboard’s slogan reads “Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from the 13,000 Atheists and Skeptics at the United Church of Bacon,” replete with the tagline, “Bacon is our God because bacon is real.” Since its inception during a meeting at Penn Jillette’s house i…
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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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…workers were placing fuel to accelerate the temple’s demise. “Turn off the laser pointers please,” yelled a temple guardian. “Newbies” someone mumbled when the laser lights returned and a testy back and forth ensued until the lighting of the temple began and everyone became transfixed by the fire. Each year I find the temple and its fiery demise the most moving experience on the playa; even if someone is hollering obnoxiously or playing with a las…
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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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