Religion Dispatches
…s “weird.” The news set off a wave of speculation that weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an inter…
Read More…imself and his family. At least in those days, the Southern Baptists had a code about divorce, but these days, Southern Baptist churches are routinely led by divorced men—the most famous being Charles Stanley. Despite divorcing his wife in 2000, he remains the pastor at the mega-sized First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Divorce has been a growing problem for the faithful. A Barna poll from 2008 revealed 33 percent of couples overall get divorced. Bor…
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…igion. It’s a matter of rights. Charles E. Cobb, an African-American journalist and author who served as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi between 1962-67 seems to have the right perspective. While recently promoting his new book On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail he offered his thoughtful opinion. “Gay marriage should be treated as any other civil right,” he said…
Read More…of a new documentary, The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code. Also distributed at the press conference were excerpts from A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California Indians by the Spanish Missions, by Elias Castillo, which include Serra ordering whippings for Indians who fled the mission. The statement by Amah Mutsun Tribal Band chairman Lopez concluded: The Catholic Church will someday realize that canonization of Serra h…
Read More…lthy gays and lesbians want to end our “religious freedoms” — which is the code phrase for “they want to pass hate crimes laws that make it illegal for us to call them the filthy sinners they are.” As a Christian, who just also happens to be a lesbian, I take offense at this continuing campaign on the religious right to promote this false dichotomy of gays vs. God. No one in the gay and lesbian community wants to curb anyone’s “religious freedom.”…
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…resistible narrative style. Indeed, the film could be read as a fairly simplistic rendering of women as the source of evil; tales that were born among ancient Mediterranean patriarchies, but have had a long and troubled history in the United States as well. In my work, I have explored the connection between misogyny, American religion, and images of sexuality, horror, and the Devil that emerge again and again in our cultural history. A few highlig…
Read More…e be? The obvious choice is a very very conservative independent fundamentalist church. It’s on Main Street, it’s easy to get to, it’s wheelchair accessible, and no other facility in the precinct would really work at all. As it happens, this church teaches that women shouldn’t vote. Its members hold this belief sincerely, for it is a well-attested and important part of their church’s tradition. They can cite scripture in support of their belief. T…
Read More…e subject of an investigation about whether he violated his town council’s code of conduct, which includes a clause saying that councilors must treat other people with respect. In the U.S. meanwhile, a congressional candidate who blamed gays for tornadoes and autism won the primary and will be the Republican challenger to Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Taiwan: Church-Sponsored ‘Happy Family’ Rally Draws Pro-Equality Protesters, Including Buddhist Nuns On Su…
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…when applied to homosexuality, unhealthy. For our community, “change” is a code word for repression, distortion, and fear. So LGBT people must either abandon repentance or queer it. If we are not to reject it, we must make it our own, make it more complex, set aside its oversimplifications. The good news is that this is a gift to everybody else. Total surrender to heteronomous ethics is unhealthy, period. It may be prescribed by some, but it is al…
Read More…the ad’s message to sink in. Most observers reacted much as blogger-journalist Lindsay Beyerstein did: I thought I must be the only person in the world who looked at a 21st century online campaign spot and suspected anti-Christ baiting. Turns out, I wasn’t alone. She wasn’t. Others were asking: Did John McCain say what I think he just said? He sure did. In portentous tones, a narrator describes Barack Obama’s charismatic appeal in pseudo-Biblical…
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