Religion Dispatches
…pologize for ruining Iraq?’ We should not therefore mistake tensions for incompatibilities or inherent opposition. I know a fair number of African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims who once voted Republican. They no longer do—not because they disagree with the Republican Party, but because they feel it has no room for them. It seems opposed to their presence in America. A good number in the Muslim-majority world feel the same way about the place o…
Read More…from electoral politics, as they could signal to candidates that a growing number of voters are interested in hearing them talk about their faith. While the number of Americans who believe it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs has remained steady since 2010—about 6-in-10, with even more significant majorities among Protestants and Catholics—this poll shows a growing number of Americans who want to hear candidates…
Read More…or point to evidence that a new religious left may be asserting itself. A number of progressive Christian blogs, such as Street Prophets and Faithful Democrats are afire with discussion of a different kind of marriage between religion and politics that emphasizes peace and justice issues instead of socio-moral concerns. In the baffling 2008 presidential primary season, Republican candidates aligned with the religious right failed to make much hea…
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…Pondering such matters led me to a comment thread about Robertson on Salon.com. Amid the predictable responses (much hateful mocking, a few claims that he was quoted out of context, and conflations of his Christianity with “religion” at large) someone posed this challenge: Given that all Muslims are incessantly challenged to repudiate Osama bin Laden, why aren’t liberal Christians under similar pressure to repudiate Robertson? I’ll take that bait…
Read More…iage as between a man and woman. According to a story from Australia’s News.com, In Indonesia, where marriage between couples of differing religion is also banned, many couples marry outside the law, meaning their union is not legal but is legitimate in the eyes of their families and friends. The controversy in this case is not the marriage itself but the apparent involvement of the Hindu religion which is against gay marriage. According to the re…
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…ite folks wish me happy juneteenth i’m supposed to say…. ?” https://twitter.com/DoctorRMB/status/1670773119127003136 However, at the root of Manigault-Bryant’s query lies the problem with a federally recognized holiday to celebrate the end of slavery: Americans still can’t honestly discuss slavery. Even if red state legislatures weren’t aggressively trying to ban meaningful discussions of race and slavery, Americans by and large are woefully incap…
Read More…ancis effect” from the pope’s first year. According to Daniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church…
Read More…uation of inferiority, disadvantage and inequality”. According to AllAfrica.com: Homosexuality is not, and never has been, illegal in Mozambique. The colonial Penal Code, as amended in 1954, contained a clause which thundered against “those who habitually engage in vices against nature”, who could be imprisoned for up to three years. But who is to decide what constitutes a “vice against nature”? The Portuguese legislators had been too coy to menti…
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…es, the standard stuff—the stories that kept coming up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQr1Go9ldw&t=2s You work as an actor, a writer, a comedian, in a lot of creative spaces. What’s the line between free speech and bigotry? Wow. What is the line between free speech and bigotry? Look, there’s always going to be free speech, and it’s a fundamental right. We are allowed to speak our minds. But bigotry will always exist—there will always be a certa…
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…ave the numbers. White clergy did not respond to this. https://www.facebook.com/publictheologian/photos/a.832371280191875.1073741829.832236016872068/1364676620294669/?type=3&theater What does that feel like for you, as a trans queer Latinx, who is also public theologian and activist working in these spheres? What does that absence from white clergy signal to you and others who hold intersectional identities? It makes me think that white clergy are…
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