Religion Dispatches
…y lived before the Freudian revolution, you see. So they didn’t think of sexuality, just sex. And they presumably had not yet laded upon one of the singular and definitive borders of the twentieth century: the boundary that defines one’s “sexual identity” strictly in terms of the gender of one’s sexual object choice. It’s an awfully ugly way of putting such a passionate and personal matter, but once you put it that way, you can see how arbitrary a…
Read More…like 500 years hence. Little of God’s image will be left in human nature, except to mock the Creator. Hitler said this of the Jews: Their very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God’s image in His creation. And, just for good measure, this is what he said about Jesus: The Founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of His estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary He drove those enemies of the human race out of…
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…xuality” and “bestiality”; that moral equation was reiterated by Pope John XXIII as late as 1962, and not called into serious question until after the Second Vatican Council. We know that both Pope John Paul II and the man who served as his Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Benedict XVI, have worked tirelessly against many of the reforms initiated by Vatican II and its “new openness” to the modern world. Looking more closely a…
Read More…rida. Denver Broncos rookie Tim Tebow has added a tonsure haircut to his mix of evangelical Christianity and football. The new do has drawn comparisons between the former Florida Gator star and Saint Francis of Assisi. Then there’s the question of why the usual scripture citation on Tebow’s eye-black didn’t make in onto the cover of the latest NCAA football video game. Perhaps to capitalize on the new evangelical football star in Denver, Focus on…
Read More…le for support and guidance during a tumultuous off-season that included sexual assault allegations and a six-game suspension for this season. Former Dallas Cowboy lineman Duke Preston left football altogether to work in Christian ministry. In baseball, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Garza exchanged theological reflections about God’s interest in the majors with Orioles hitter Luke Scott. Does anyone else pick up on a Catholic-Protestant undertone in…
Read More…ouncing the planned Qur’an burnings in Florida. In the wake of recent teen bullying, Christian group Exodus International has decided to pull its support of the “Day of Truth,” an event that encourages school students to “counter the promotion of homosexual behavior.” As of Wednesday, Focus on the Family was standing by the event. As the Major League playoffs get started, Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton relies on his evangelical Christianity to stave…
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…ever taken place on Earth. As I write, religious leaders across the globe are preparing sermons for weekend services that will no doubt highlight the rescue. But, I have to wonder what impact their spiritual, biblical, ethical, and other insights might have brought to a worldwide spiritual experience that unfolded through the day on October 13—the Feast of Digital Ascension, if I had any say in such things—had more seen their ministries extending…
Read More…in on men’s genitalia. Reverby stumbled on the story while researching the better-known and just as disturbing experiments on black men with syphilis in Alabama from 1932-1972. In Alabama, the disease wasn’t given to the men, but rather they were identified as having the disease and followed for many years to see its progression. The men were deceived into believing they were being treated for syphilis, while attempts were made to actually withhol…
Read More…ity but also the US Senate, President Obama, the governments of Canada and Germany, and, most recently, Bob Costas in shouting a collective, outraged “WTF” at the International Olympic Committee for refusing to hold a minute of silence in memory of the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics forty years ago. I have yet to hear any rationale for the IOC’s intransigence on this point. Whatever one thinks of Israel, Palestine, an…
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…hat do address medieval science are often dense and technical, written by experts for experts. They focus too closely on one subject—the history of geometry, the history of the astrolabe—failing to give the broader picture of a vibrant scientific curiosity. Even these books usually overlook Gerbert’s era (950-1003), jumping from Charlemagne’s school reforms in the 800s to the first full Latin translation of Euclid’s Elements in the mid-1100s, fo…
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