Religion Dispatches
…at cross purposes. My first thought was to kick myself for leaving my cell phone behind. This would have made a terrific picture. My second thought was to find a less obtrusive spot where I could watch to see how this excruciatingly slow drama would play out. But before I could move, my husband drifted up behind me in his kayak, took one look at the frog and snake and muttered, “I can’t take this.” Over my objections (“But it’s nature!”) Jeff stre…
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…hat I mean is: we could say, hypothetically, that she needs an abortion in order to preserve her life, her mental or physical health, or her access to safe housing, but some law requires her to claim rape in order to get one because the lawmakers valued other things more highly than they valued her life, health, and safety? I mean, I’m just speculating here. But perhaps denying her those things is exactly the point. As Amanda Marcotte suggested…
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…absolution was granted by way of the Confession app itself rather than, according to Catholic teaching, through the mediation of the priest. No wonder Pope Benedict XVI’s Message for World Communications Day earlier this year highlighted silence and listening—the heart of Christian practices of contemplation—by way of encouraging the development of “a kind of ‘eco-system’ that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images, and sounds…
Read More…s right in front of us, difference is on our iPads, in our laptops, in our phones. We hold a whole world of difference every time we open a phone. And the response to in the world around is at best insult, and so often violence, a reality which is the living experience of many you here. Welby also addressed a January gathering of Primates, which voted to suspend the Episcopal Church from questions on doctrine or policy for three years because of i…
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…ollowers explained it this way: “I turned my back on the world. I can’t afford to doubt.” A Perfect Puzzle May 21 believers couldn’t afford to doubt either. Whenever I met one, I would ask: Is there any chance you might be wrong? Could someone have miscalculated, misunderstood a verse, botched a symbol? Just maybe? I asked this question of a believer in his mid-twenties. He started listening to Harold Camping’s radio show in college and immediatel…
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…sons. Bermuda: Government proposes domestic partnerships to supplant court-ordered marriage equality The government is seeking to replace court-ordered marriage equality with new domestic partnership legislation; a public comment period on the bill lasts until November 15. Minister of Home Affairs said that “same-sex couples who are already married will not have this designation taken away from them.” Mexico: Favorable review for marriage equality…
Read More…maternal grandmother. Schmitz is clearly trying to evoke this tradition in order to claim that there’s no way he’s an anti-Semite. And maybe he’s not! But there are reasons to find this appeal to ancestry more than a little off-putting. First of all, it ignores an enormous, ongoing internecine throwdown taking place over what it means to be “ethnically Jewish” (if I may quote Schmitz). Orthodox Jews and the Conservative Jewish movement stand by ma…
Read More…hey distributed “6 million voter guides, 8 million mail pieces, 15 million phone calls, 500,000 doors knocked on by volunteers, and radio advertising covering 56 congressional districts and 22 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races,” they are now (apparently as I write this) surveying voters to learn “who went to the polls and why.” Instructive for those of us who follow the influence of the religious right on the tea party movement (arguing that it’…
Read More…asked them if the LDS Church was getting involved, and the staffer on the phone said, “We’re meeting with church leaders right this minute; they’re at lunch with Focus on the Family and [National Organization for Marriage-sponsored] Preserve Marriage Washington.” To this day, we don’t know whether it was local or general church leaders who met with Preserve Marriage Washington—we believe they were local leaders. But a reporter for the Boston Glob…
Read More…t Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into an anti-Mormon ad lib, it does not make for a concerted anti-Mormon effort. (Leave that to orthographically challenged “Heaven is Easy” ministry in Florida.) May cool heads prevail as the race heats up in its fina…
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