Religion Dispatches
…ation 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 any reference to the context in which Bonhoeffer coined the term. The Gestapo didn’t hang Dietrich Bonhoeffer in April 1945 because he had taken a stand for sexual abstinenc…
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…and other materials in order to get the blessings. I know that will seem distasteful and a caricature to some, but these events are well-attended, and at a hundred bucks a person, revenues from book and DVD sales. Conferences and meetings like Lou Engles’ The Call are not just prayer meetings, they are Christian marketplaces, with all sorts of spiritual wares being sold. As to the political interaction, all of these groups know they don’t have the…
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…be sure, the data isn’t based on a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence….
Read More…y. Anyway, this Bloomberg piece on power players eschewing the use of cell phones strikes me as of a piece with my executive’s perspective. Technology is for the people who work for you. The article literally discusses someone getting Third-World peasants to loan her a cell in a pinch. You don’t get much more entitled than that. Still, there is something to be said for the virtues of unhooking from technology. I sometimes wonder if the convenience…
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…es are hearing a case about whether or not church steeples can host mobile phone masts, since the masts might be used to relay porn. Whether one embraces, challenges, or rejects the use of digitized sacred texts and the technology used to support them, they are here to stay. Some will see digitized texts as “the same as it ever was,” simply delivered via a new medium, and preserved for future readers. Others wish to restrict the digital multiplica…
Read More…ered little support. Now a seminarian seeking ordination as a Reformed Christian minister, this was the first time I had returned in more than 30 years. Speaking only in Spanish, the pope’s homily touched upon the damage native people suffered through the system of missions that Junipero Serra help found. “The Church, the holy People of God, treads the dust-laden paths of history, so often traversed by conflict, injustice and violence, in order to…
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…rences to gay marriage? Of course not, because that institution did not exist when this stuff was written. Yes, King David loved Jonathan “as his own soul,” but we don’t find their wedding in scripture. Instead, we get from scripture only David’s Amoris Laetitia—his joy of love. In the second chapter, Pope Francis notes that families have changed. Spouses now share more responsibilities. He hits on his oft-repeated belief that in a marriage person…
Read More…fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws. It seems that Tuesday’s vote against the divestment motion was something of a landmark in Christian-Jewish relations. In a reversal of the dominant historical paradigm, the Rabbis may have bested the Archbishop. …
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…can tradition of religious groups acting as a counterbalance to the weight of consumerist culture. For those with less faith in the commercial model, the situation might seem a little grim. Siddhartha Gautama set out to eliminate desire. But perhaps desire’s greatest structural incarnation—the marketplace—will eliminate him. Thanks to Leah Schulson and Ethan McCurdy for contributing reporting from New York. Also on RD: Religious, Spiritual, and “N…
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…second subpoena from the other side of the state, from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, facing its own charges concerning the alleged abuse of a 19-year-old woman. SNAP has fought the requests, citing Missouri laws protecting the privacy of rape survivors, and describing the records-request as a coordinated Church effort to bully sex abuse victims into silence and harass a longtime opponent into bankruptcy. While the United States Conference of Cath…
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