Religion Dispatches
…of a critically ill patient have been known to conflict with a healthcare provider’s principles.) With all due respect, putting the onus on the patient, as if patients enjoy such a range of choice in their healthcare providers, seems at least as unrealistic a prospect as convincing nearly all sexually-active adults in the U.S. that they shouldn’t use contraception. No, this problem will be something for Catholic institutions themselves to sort…
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…ns Oren more than J Street, the recently established “political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” Since its establishment in 2008, J Street has received increasing levels of media attention for positioning itself as a liberal alternative to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which describes itself as “America’s pro-Israel lobby.” Clearly J Street is trying to position itself as supporting peace at a time when a growing…
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…genital sores of the new disease syphilis, which seemed to judge sexual improprieties. Strasbourgeois were buffeted by famine and peasant rebellion, by accounts of the twisted bodies of monstrous progeny and of the Ottomans pushing on the eastern edge of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was inundated with apocalyptic pamphlets, which included apocryphal accounts of mass armies of the Purgatorial dead rampaging across Germany, some holding their seve…
Read More…g deadlines. In the next week (that is, by or before September 20), all my pre-travel preparations need to be complete. It all feels rather last-minute to me. But then, maybe that’s the way it goes. No, if I had my way I would call this entry: how not to choose a tour company. Really. The choice of the company I am working this out with is the result of one of those eeny-meeny-miny-mo Internet searches. It’s a business, after all, this: getting pe…
Read More…d that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion. He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video’s purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula’s address. —- For more RD coverage of the events in Libya see “Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuses,” by Haroon Moghul — ed….
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…oratorium on executions nationwide existed from September 26, 2007, until April 16, 2008, while the US Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the lethal injection protocol used by the majority of death penalty states.” In Baze v. Rees, the Court ruled “that the current protocol used by Kentucky (and other states, including Texas) does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.” The Court’s decision “lifted all stays in effect at the t…
Read More…to play in upholding the human rights of sexual minorities and ensuring appropriate and accessible health services, including for men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people.” The meeting provided an avenue for open, inclusive exploratory discussions on religious perspectives on sexual and gender identity and health rights, in the context of HIV. In countries across South Asia, MSM and transgender people as well as other sexual minorit…
Read More…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…
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…sm. There’s no question that Christian ideas have shaped American business practices, just as American business practices have influenced churches. Lumping the annual revenues of Walmart in with synagogue dues, donations to the Salvation Army, and Catholic hospitals seems like a stretch. And if you look at other corporations, and the criteria used to include them, the territory becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from a Desere…
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…e, with more than half citing an excessive focus on rules (51%) and an inappropriate concern with money and power (51%). But do such data really tell us much about American religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American relig…
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