Religion Dispatches
…to buy into the vision of Glenn Beck and others who make it easy to turn away from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy…
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…reats being made against the National Pride March scheduled for June 25 in Mexico City, something they attributed to the stance of the Catholic hierarchy and the increase in hate speech in recent weeks. News has begun to emerge about the killing of seven people at a gay club in Veracruz last month, which had initially been treated by authorities as drug-related violence. Turkey: Pride, under threat from Islamists and nationalists, cancelled by cit…
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…Protestant and Catholic religious leaders, are planning a massive march in Mexico City next Saturday, September 24, building on rallies held earlier this month across the country. US anti-gay activist Brian Brown, who heads both the National Organization for Marriage and the World Congress of Families, announced this week that he will be heading to Mexico to lend his support. The National Organization for Marriage is also organizing an anti-marria…
Read More…” said Ilán Semo, historian at the Jesuit-run Ibero-American University in Mexico City. The modern Mexican state was created byrevolutionaries at odds with the Catholic Church, and they sought to curb its authority through measures such as introducing a secular school system. For decades, Mexico was considered the most anticlerical country in Latin America outside of Cuba, despite the fact that the country is overwhelmingly Catholic. Census data s…
Read More…an views” on same-sex marriage. At a press conference last Thursday, Brian Houston, head of the evangelical megachurch Hillsong, was asked by the New York Times about his position on same-sex marriage. Houston, whose congregation is based in Australia but boasts around 100,000 weekly worshipers at campuses in a dozen cities around the world (including New York City and Los Angeles), responded to the question by saying that while he wouldn’t offer…
Read More…sions about what couples to bless. Poland: Marriage equality may be years away but five couples fighting for their rights Worldcrunch reports on five gay and lesbian couples who “have decided to publicly fight for their fight to get married” in a country that is “home to a diehard traditional Catholicism that some say was even too pious for Pope Francis. The couples’ attempts to marry have been rejected by city officials. Krzysztof Łoś and Grzegor…
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…y airline companion and give him this book, to surprise him, too—in a good way. (I would accept Lakers tickets in lieu of apologies, but I think that particular era is done.) This whole book is a result of a profound evolution, and needs to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us out to be (our earliest heroes include Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a…
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…tion. Those profiles allow women to “use our own identities as a tool is a way to assert radical self-respect and a way to claim the narrative as our own. “What happened to women in the past is that the leadership cast them as outsiders and forced them out, so that they no longer had any control of the narrative of what they were doing. We are claiming our insider status and developing a sense of identity and a narrative that affirms and relies o…
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…We have an unprecedented access to cheap goods, yet we must recognize that cheap goods are cheaply made. I am not speaking of quality, I am speaking of cheap labor. We must recognize that through the act of shopping, whether it is for an article of clothing, a toy, a pint of strawberries, or even our morning cup of coffee, we participate in a global economy that values profit over people. Disposable goods are made by disposable people, faceless in…
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…spatial metaphors at play here. Invaders of light coming from outside the city—a city that’s still “theirs”—to do battle with the forces of evil secularism that have somehow appeared from within the city itself. As far as coherence goes, I’m not sure the metaphors hang together. The pairing of opponents seems off, like Jedi vs. Zombies, or Crusaders vs. Martian Bodysnatchers. (OK, those could be awesome movies, but you get my point.) But note how…
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