Religion Dispatches
…who wants a Christian president, particularly one who would revise the tax code “so we can rejoice together because it would stimulate economic growth.” (Huckabee’s hosted debate, though, this past weekend, was more of a snooze than a circus.) In 2008 Huckabee got a fundraising boost from Kenneth Copeland, Word of Faith megastar. Copeland, at the time under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee for misuse of tax-deductible donor funds, cla…
Read More…the precarious outlook for Brazil’s native communities. Given the recent history of foreign and local infiltration into indigenous lands and violence against their people, American missionaries can at the very least trump historical precedence and support indigenous rights instead of impeding them….
Read More
…white set of practitioners, even though they are probably a minority of American practitioners. “So much of the Asian diasporic and Asian-American face of Buddhism has been erased and dismissed from the mainstream versions of the dharma in the U.S.,” said the BPF’s Katie Loncke. The outsized visibility of white celebrities and CEOs practicing mindfulness highlights the longstanding tension between the immigrant Asian Buddhist community and the con…
Read More
…atives immediately attacked Obama’s requirement, stating that empathy was “code” for a judge who would legislate from the bench (a position satirized by one observer who noted that Jesus himself, a noted proponent of empathy, would have been opposed by the GOP as well). They’ve taken a fresh new idea and wrapped it in the lexicon of the same old culture wars. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell stated that Obama wanted a judge with “perceived s…
Read More…agister at Chiesa last Monday, five cardinals and 45 bishops from across Africa met in Accra, Ghana, from June 8-11 in a meeting called by the symposium of episcopal conferences of Africa and Madagascar. All in the clear light of day, not almost in secret like some of their colleagues from Germany, France, and Switzerland, who had gathered a few days before at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. But while at the Gregorian the objective wa…
Read More…Christians are better than Christianity. They employ their personal moral code, choosing the moral morsels from the Bible that square with their contemporary sensibility. The Bible does not portray Jesus as a liberal powerhouse. Or at least, not solely as the man liberal Christians claim. We need look no further than hell to prove this point. Americans possess an unparalled degree of religious liberty, but Jesus promises eternal torture if they e…
Read More…port was released, Monk openly appeared (in possible violation of military code) at the Values Voters Summit for a panel. The Liberty Institute’s Jeff Mateer put his hand on Monk’s shoulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.”…
Read More…Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights North America wrote, American Jews are rightly outraged by Hoffman’s arrest, but they’re quicker to object to Israel’s human rights violations when they’re directed at other Jews, rather than at Palestinians or African refugees. Would I like to see a full discussion of all that? Of course. I’m being realistic (sort of) here. If the candidates had, in my fantasy world, been questione…
Read More
…ympathetic to the advertising. But we don’t take a position on this except promoting dialogue. At Sojourners, we’ve decided to have a safe place for dialogue and even disagreement on our staff and in our constituency. That’s interesting, since the Believe Out Loud ad could be best interpreted as . . . promoting dialogue. Sojourners, so far, has been silent on the Rev. Robert Chase’s piece we published here. In the court of public opinion Twitter,…
Read More
…nd Rapinoe in the “Equality” commercial for condemning prejudice against African Americans, immigrants, women and LGBT people. However, they should also use their formidable voices to advocate for the workers who make Nike shoes in Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Honduras and elsewhere. A public championing of the rights of those workers—alongside thousands of college students, professors and activists–might more effectively prod Nike to finally “just…
Read More