Religion Dispatches
…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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…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…slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were permitted. Despite 10,000 folding chairs, most of us would have no choice but to stand. Once in my appointed place behind the last row of seats, I found myself in a community of fellow pilgrims, lottery winners from local parishes, nearby colleges, an…
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…coffin of Roman Catholic same-sex marriage: In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as for proposals to place unions between homo- sexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”. It is unacceptable “that local Churches should be subjected to press…
Read More…d too much time worrying about social justice issues, lives alone in a charming three-story brick Victorian home valued at $3.84 million. • Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, head of the bishop’s Committee on Religious Liberty—the epicenter of the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage and the contraception mandate—and the man supposedly behind the investigation of the LCWR, lives in a 11,5000-square foot historic mansion that dates back to the…
Read More…tax concerns and anti-government/anti-union sentiment. Since the Reagan Administration, religious conservatives have pushed for the elimination of the Federal Department of Education. The strategy has been to move from federal control, to state control, and then toward privatization. That call received renewed emphasis among tea party supporters in the last election and governors elected on promises to cut both taxes and state deficits are lookin…
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…ion centers would be able to match. For yoga practitioners, the story here might sound familiar. A spiritual practice, fresh from the exotic Orient, becomes popular among American elites, and adapts itself to the world of for-profit fitness instruction. You might say that MNDFL is aiming to yogify mindfulness-oriented meditation. Yes, it’s the mind you’re stretching, not the muscles. But in both cases, a ritual practice has been repackaged as a se…
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…ng in this most religious of countries: either I believe what my religious minister, family, and community say or I believe these facts my teacher is telling me. What if we changed things? What if we taught about science as a process, and taught both its power and limitations? What if we taught in science class that there are other valuable non-scientific ways of looking at the world? Some are not scientifically testable, and so are outside the re…
Read More…were murdered over the centuries. Diluting the meaning of the term ‘antisemitism’ is, itself, antisemitic. Second, as I described in a recent post, there is indeed a structural similarity between some of the Occupy movement’s concerns and historical antisemitism. Occupy is, indeed, protesting against the malefactors of great wealth and their international cabals of political-financial interest. Add the word “Jewish” in there, and you’ve got world…
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…for a time that he was having the better evening because of his way with a microphone and his remarkable capacity to modulate his voice (not to mention outing himself as LDS pastor and bishop). But it was Billy Graham’s endorsement, splashed into our faces via an expensive full-page Sunday New York Times ad, that triggered my flat-out recognition: the 94-year-old daddy of all televangelists is laying his bony patriarchal hands upon a fellow preach…
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