Religion Dispatches
…roway, Kadaga received a hero’s welcome on her return from a conference in Canada. She is calling criticism leveled against anti-gay persecution in Uganda by the Canadian foreign minister an attack on Uganda’s sovereignty and culture. She reportedly received a hero’s welcome at the airport. “The rally at Entebbe’s airport was organized by religious leaders, former Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, and Anti-Homosexuality Bill sponso…
Read More…lt” and “criminal skills” sites. Netsweeper, a global corporation based in Canada, categorizes websites and allows clients to choose which ones to block. In addition to following state and federal laws to block child pornography, the Salem Library also elected to block all sites that Netsweeper categorized as related to the “occult” and “criminal skills.” Between them, these categories included almost all sites expressing positive or neutral views…
Read More…w killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!” And he put the number of Jews killed at “200,000 to 300,000.” Straight from the Holocaust denier’s handbook. You’d think the pope would’ve been humiliated by these statements since the interview aired on the very day that he lifted the excommunication of Williamson and three other SSPX bishops. The pope and his supporters of course claim that he had no idea that Williamson held these vie…
Read More…leave me unconvinced that doors of mercy and justice are somehow adjoined. Canada: Catholic Bishops Resist Trans-Friendly School Guidelines Catholic Bishops resist new school policies. The conservative Church Militant reviews a rhetorical battle being waged by a couple of bishops against new education guidelines on gender identity in the province of Alberta. The new guidelines say school boards have until March 31 to come up with policies that sup…
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…e evangelist for soft-pedaling the idea. For example, The Baptist Pillar (“Canada’s Only TRUE Baptist Paper”) once stated that “Billy Graham has declared his allegiance with the blasphemous apostasy of our day” by preaching that hell might be more metaphorical than actual. The 1983 sermon that roused the Baptist Pillar’s ire provides an interesting comparison between spoken words that were indisputably Graham’s, published words that were basically…
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…ries, which appears—as of this week—to be capable of taking down a Russian airliner, bombing a Lebanese neighborhood, and staging a sophisticated assault in a major Western capital. Given how badly the war on terror went, one would think more people would have learned what not to do. It’s scarier when people with influence maintain such bad ideas. 1. The glass is half-full Evidence-free ideologies such as Stalinism, Nazism & Islam are dangerous be…
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…ian sects like the Quakers. In both the novel and its historical analogue, Canada remains the ultimate destination. These many allusions in Atwood’s novel demonstrate her close attention to the Christian Right’s racialized roots, and in this aspect the novel retains its prescience for our current condition. But Hulu has intentionally made the decision to diversify its cast by making Offred’s lesbian friend and sister handmaid Moira African America…
Read More…ter the confession. The Reverend Mary Haddad, Cathedral Canon, was away in Canada dealing with visa problems. I went to their site to get directions to the church and ended up listening to several excellent sermons, including one the Sunday after the bombing at La Republique.) On this Sunday, Rev. Harper covered asserted multiple times and ways that politics and religion are siblings, not enemies. The Baruch 5: 1- 9 text mattered: “Take off the ga…
Read More…mother. I know her father was a doctor and that her parents immigrated to Canada in 1967, in one of the great American moral passages north. How did they and she know how to care about the people most people think are expendable? Like the Vietnamese then or the Pacific Islanders now? Exile? Neighbors? Interestingly, the Communists enjoyed no such amnesia about the other. Klein is powerfully moral in a theological way. Use of the words “sacrifice”…
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…igious freedom and expanding the freedom to marry.” …“Given the increasing number of children being brought up by same sex couples, it is desirable that the state take away any social stigma against same sex parents. “Given the ageing population, the state has an interest in recognising and protecting long term relationships of same sex couples who care for each other. “Given the harmful effects of homophobia, the state has an interest in encourag…
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