Religion Dispatches
…missions in Baja California and to lead the conquest and settlement of New Spain’s remote northwestern reaches. Spain was aware of the growing threat of Russian and British trade, but they had not much interest in the land that we call California. So they dispatched a quite devoted and austere Mallorcan Franciscan, Serra, who already had years of mission experience in Mexico’s Sierra Gorda, experience that included a fair amount of zealous evangel…
Read More…lamic interruption.” What a nice form of denial. Having studied medieval Spain in preparation for our trip, I found uncomfortable echoes with Serbian propaganda. Spain expelled its Jewish population in 1492 followed by Muslims, though ethnically speaking, Spanish Muslims, Christians, and Jews were largely the same people. And right-wing Serbs argued that Bosnian Muslims were Ottoman leftovers; with Turkish rule long since undone, overdoing the o…
Read More…GT church. The Metropolitan Community Churches will open a congregation in Madrid later this year and will be the first Spanish church to celebrate same-sex marriages. Spain is also home to the annual Moors and Christians festival where Spaniards in the town of Moraira get back to their “Moorish roots” by reenacting 13th century battles over the local castle. Here in the United States, Muslims continue to run into difficulties expanding and buildi…
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…tholic Christianity as a factor in his conversion, but he also points to a number of other courses that he took at King’s that led him to the point of conversion. He says of the college’s curriculum that it is “not a ‘great books curriculum’ but it draws heavily on the liberal arts tradition.” He adds, “You can’t study the liberal arts without confronting the rich history of Catholicism.” Indeed The King’s College is a microcosm of the larger comm…
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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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…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. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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…officials around the country denounced the bus. The BBC reported that the Madrid City Council acted to force the bus off city streets. Barcelona’s mayor and city council have warned the bus to stay away. Finland: Marriage equality goes into effect Marriage law became officially gender neutral on March 1; same-sex couples previously registered as domestic partners by apply to a local magistrate to transform their partnership into a legal marriage….
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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…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…
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