Religion Dispatches
…measure, to assure that sexual desire won’t enter the picture. Celibacy is best, Paul opines. For those too weak–willed to take up such a life, marriage is a next-best alternative. Get to orgasm before you start to feel devilish desire. For desire is disordered, and it has been since Eden. This all assumes the point of view of the man in the relationship, of course; so do Reverend Young’s dismissive allusions to back rubs and walks in the park. Fe…
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…nd repatriation are the new buzzwords in American museums, and some of our best museums (the Getty, the Metropolitan, the Cleveland Museum, the Princeton Museum) were recently forced to send a lot of Greek works of art back, not to Greece, but to Rome. It’s all a bit bewildering, but fascinating at the same time. Which leads me to a second project, a book about the Greek island of Crete where I excavated for five years. I want to use Cretan hist…
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…, because he started the religious liberty thing. Liberty is fabulous, the best. All Americans should be free to take religious liberties. Oh, and that Turnbull guy, is he serious? I’m supposed to care about what Australia thinks? Gimme a break. Gonna talk about that tomorrow. Gonna say that I know how to play rough, gonna tell them all that fighting the bad guys won’t be pretty for a while. Let’s see if the Sunday School types at the Hilton tomor…
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…merican political fundamentalism. Sharlet, who has since become one of the best journalists covering American religion today (and a columnist for Religion Dispatches), got a remarkable scoop some years back. An acquaintance invited him into Ivanwald, the community in Arlington, Virginia, that exposed him to a network of which few outsiders are aware. He calls it “The Family,” though it goes by several names; some incorporated, others not. Beginnin…
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…s a strategy making for great P.R. and fundraising, but it won’t do much to shift the political landscape, or the case before the Michigan courts. Sadly, not much will, given the intransigence of some people. Sometimes, as the Hebrew prophets knew, the best call is simply to get out of the way and announce the consequences to come. In this case, that probably means a whole bunch of people are going to die unnecessarily. As much as anyone might wis…
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…u think, I was a saint? Nope, just a real person, attempting to do what is best. Yesterday what was best was to go easy on myself. As I get older with the fasting, I get more challenged by the routine. I don’t know why it took me so long to see it, but about four years ago, I realized one thing which for me is particularly hard. Although I really do get to eat about as much as I do when not fasting, so I cannot complain about being hungry, ever. B…
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Sister Simone Campbell is perhaps best known to many Americans as the most prominent of the Nuns on the Bus, who have criscrossed America since 2012, bringing attention to healthcare, immigration issues, and gaps in the social structure that affect the most poor and vulnerable. But Sister Simone, as she’s most often called, is also a seasoned attorney and lobbyist who is the executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby based in…
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…nything Al Jazeera decides to transform into yet another symbol of Zionist bestiality, eventually we will hear evidence that Palestinian propagandists and their media allies have distorted the truth. When Israel assaulted the West Bank village of Jenin during the second intifada, at first the international media alleged that hundreds of innocent Palestinians had been massacred, and that bulldozers had crushed houses and destroyed property for no d…
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…ance much in the way of beloved community. But if, as Rohr also says, “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better,” then Ireland’s ethically sensitive activists—of all faiths and none—have a beautiful opportunity. It’s simple—the best that we know of Irishness centers on one noble and vital gift: hospitality. Céad mile fáilte, we say— “a hundred thousand welcomes.” The invitation being offered to Ireland’s spiritually committed in…
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…n his words, “Some of us believe we belong to the Creator who knows what’s best for us; others believe they belong to themselves and knows what’s best for them.” Any political belief that seems to be inspired by a Godless worldview, then, is automatically false. Backholm’s presentation loudly echoes Barna’s morning presentation and underlines a theme from the conference. The “biblical worldview” framework offers an opportunity to both inoculate ev…
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