Religion Dispatches
…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…
Read More…lity courses, yoga courses, or zen courses, but none of those things would free the person to be like a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit, according to Francis, has the power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at…
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…7% of Australian Christians believe all federal parliamentarians should be free to vote on same-sex marriage as soon as possible. It found support for a free vote is strong across all Christian age groups, but strongest among millennials (aged 18-34) at 86%. It also asked about civil celebrants’ right to refuse to marry same-sex couples. At the moment, wedding service providers such as civil celebrants, or businesses such as florists or caterers,…
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…age of conservative evangelicals rather than what all too often amounts to free PR, journalists will need to ask such questions, to focus on the ways that evangelicals make themselves “all things to all people,” addressing the general public very differently from the ways they address their own; and journalists will need to include the perspectives of critical researchers and exvangelicals alongside the voices of evangelicals in the articles they…
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…of radical hospitality: every visitor to the temple is fed in the “guru’s free kitchen.” Langar is based on the idea, begun by Nanak Dev, the first Sikh guru, that feeding and clothing people is the most fundamental human transaction of all. To feed people is seva—voluntary, selfless service. A Sikh community in Medford, Massachusetts, Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar, is typical of many Sikh places of worship in this tradition of hospitality. On Sunda…
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…nce of certain Ideas & Principles upon which this nation is built—Liberty, Freedom of Conscience, Equality.” Turning Point’s video suggests that the church’s program promotes “disunity” and “segregation.” But here too, there’s no evidence to support the claim, and plenty that refutes it. As Edgerton told the Chicago Sun Times, “You don’t fast from things that are despicable. … You don’t fast from things that are ugly,” he said. “You fast from thos…
Read More…between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day.” In a document [pdf], entitled “Tips for the Last Minute Organizer of Those Whose Administrators Said ‘No,’” students are explicitly told that if a teacher asks them to speak they “do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time.” In schools where permission is denied, students are encouraged to remain silent at lunch, wear a button or a r…
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…undamentalism.” That encyclical included clear and direct criticism of the free-market fundamentalism at the heart of attempts to dismantle financial reform: The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample u…
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…I swiped from the visitors’ table. (Catholics churches should step up the free swag factor.) Now driving through Northeast Los Angeles, I pass about half a dozen churches of sundry shapes and sizes. Some are storefront establishments, others steepled behemoths you can spot from the 110. Some are older and rooted, like the Iglesia Pentecostal Esmirna, others newer, like the recently planted Gold Line Church, named for the metro light rail that run…
Read More…n’t get anywhere on time, except for sundown, when it’s a kind of punctual free-for-all. But then there’s that one guy who, despite being just as capable of hearing the adhan (call to prayer) as you or I still breaks his fast (iftar literally means ‘breakfast’) early. Doesn’t he have that cheesy adhan alarm clock that they used to sell at ISNA, which for those who don’t know is, along with Star Trek conventions, the world’s largest gathering of vi…
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