Religion Dispatches
…Participants returned to a local park to listen to Conference on their cellphones—the first time in history that Church officials permitted broad media access to the event, a move some have characterized as a concession to ticket requests from Ordain Women leaders. Inside the Tabernacle and the nearby Conference Center, rows of seats went unfilled. Saturday’s Ordain Women action has initiated an unprecedented conversation about power, leadership,…
Read More
…member are the mantras: “Segregation is our tradition” and “Blacks are separate but equal.” I studied geology in college with the hope of getting rich in the oil fields of Texas, but as a patriotic graduate I joined the military, my ticket out of Louisiana and an opportunity to explore the world. In my fourth year, having become a naval officer, I volunteered for shore duty in Vietnam which would become a turning point in my life. Never had I expe…
Read More…ti-colonialist” behavior of his father. He asserted that Obama also demonstrated disloyalty by aiming to be a “global citizen.” Titus maintained that Obama’s presidential eligibility is not a legal question for the courts to resolve (perhaps because he doesn’t trust the courts to interpret the Constitution in his own, singularly “biblical” way. Or, as Peroutka put it, case law demonstrates the “evil of evolutionary thinking.”) Rather, Titus predic…
Read More
…ty at stake, he says, but her very survival hangs in the balance. To illustrate his point and to make his threat more vivid, the counselor tells Corinne about seeing a politician in McDonald’s, a man the counselor knew was having an affair. The counselor duly rebuked him, he recounts, but the man’s eyes remained cold, his heart unrepentant. On his way home, that same man skidded in his car off the road and died. The counselor’s message to Corinne…
Read More…candidate and the trouble that ensued from bringing her on the Republican Ticket. Palin has been in full-tilt mode, bringing out her supporters to condemn the movie, in an attempt to deflect the depiction of her performance as a troubled, unstable VP candidate. Palin’s obsession with President Obama’s vetting as a candidate only serves to put the spotlight back on how unprepared Palin was not only as a candidate, but to take the office of vice pr…
Read More
…t got the ball rolling. Clearly in need of a conservative Christian on the ticket, and not being the favorite of evangelicals like James Dobson for his previous stances on social issues, McCain decided to tack toward Pentecostals, gaining endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Those short-lived fiascoes left him in search of endorsements from prominent Christians. What Game Change did not show was how Richard Land and others had promoted Pa…
Read More…aithful to encourage them to “vote Catholic”—i.e. vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket. Leading the charge is Bishop Daniel Jenky, of Peoria, Illinois, who is calling for all priests “by virtue of their vow of obedience to me as your Bishop” to read his letter on the election at each mass they celebrate this weekend. The letter, addressed to Catholic believers, is an appeal to the “threat to religious liberty” because of the HHS mandate. Since Bishop J…
Read More…n Post columnist James Downie to ask Monday what Romney’s business-world strategy would mean for the American economy. Who are the investors for whom Romney would seek to maximize profit? Downie writes: “In this post-Citizens United world, the voters of America are not Bain’s investors, but the workers at companies Romney’s Bain took over. The wealthy donors who are financing Romney’s campaign are the investors.” As both the Obama campaign and t…
Read More
…nce, the bus adventure captured many imaginations and functioned to demonstrate how the free exercise of religion can achieve many good ends for those who will bear the cost. Resetting the National Moral Compass I must admit that I thought the whole plan rather hokey at first. The nuns’ bus almost crossed paths with the Romney campaign’s motor coach somewhere in Wisconsin. The Obama bus trip will transverse similar terrain to assure the electorate…
Read More
…nally. You cannot possibly ‘hate’ him,” she would insist. “Hate” was a big-ticket word not to be squandered on annoying siblings or corrupt politicians. My mother’s semantic ethics on this point have stayed with me throughout my life, so I’ve never been one to throw around words like “hate,” “hater,” or “hate speech” casually. Words are of course powerful things, filled with the potential for hurt and shame that can linger for years, poisoning sou…
Read More