Religion Dispatches
…mes with camps linked to them, going to the International Genealogical Index.” She admitted that “There’s no possible way of knowing exactly how many names, but it’s substantial.” ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Election Day Nightmares: In a WorldNetDaily column Jill Stanek, the head of BornAliveTruth.org, an anti-abortion group that spent more than $500,000 for anti-Obama ads in several swing states, wrote: Altogether, this [the election results] means we…
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…ch was subsequently adopted by Congress. The amendment defined nonprofit tax-exempt entities—including churches—as those “which [do] not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” During the recent election cycle, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)—who considers itself the antithesis of the American Civil Libertie…
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…s’ brother, Brad), is illustrated with a photo of Matthew dressed like a Texas gentleman rancher, holding a long unlit cigar, and inexplicably accompanied by two armed Sudanese “freedom fighters” in military garb. “The photo was taken,” Jennifer writes, “in the upper Nile. My husband, cool as a cucumber in the 120-degree heat, demonstrates that it is possible to be well-dressed even in the far reaches of Africa.” RD contributor Kathryn Joyce, auth…
Read More…true intention of what our Constitution meant,” she continued. “The homosexuals get it — it’s a struggle between our religious freedoms and their right to do what they want to do.” Ah, there’s the old canard that always gets trotted out by those on the religious right — it’s gays vs. God! Those filthy gays and lesbians want to end our “religious freedoms” — which is the code phrase for “they want to pass hate crimes laws that make it illegal for…
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…paying for my daughter’s college education. Seriously, I wish I could have written Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. It is one of those magisterial books about history that has become part of history. Books like that happen once in a generation. Sigh. What’s your next book? It is on a less-than cheerful subject—the decline of Christianity in the West. I’m wondering what forms Christianity will take, and what wisdom it will bear, as its hold on its a…
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…elationships. But there’s no investigation of the reasons why widespread sexual activity by priests persists; whether it be child sexual abuse, affairs with parishioners, or “marriages” surrounded by a conspiracy of silence. In fact, the all-male rule of the Roman Catholic Church is self-destructing. Ordained men, from priests to the Pope, are proving that it wasn’t a good idea to leave Church governance to an old boys’ network. They have been foc…
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…lileo’s, in fact), he couldn’t bear that it would fund the Genesis-making experiments at CERN. When science explains away the hand of God, he believes, religion will lose its relevance. People will doom themselves to spiritless squalor. Ewan McGregor portrays, to my knowledge, the first action-movie villain driven to his diabolical acts by an addiction to intelligent design theory. Natural Enemies There aren’t a lot of religion-and-science movies,…
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…y large numbers part with the Vatican over precisely the issues one would expect: feminism and sexual ethics. Birth control and abortion are not only “litmus tests” for US Supreme Court justices; they provide the banners both progressive and anti-Modern Catholics carry into cultural battle today. It is scarcely imaginable how, given the current impasse, North American Catholics will not re-define their relationship to Roman authority in the relati…
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…the overarching spirit of the pages is determinedly representative. Same-sex couples and mixed-race couples, old money couples and new money couples, couples who like tennis and couples who like cooking classes—everyone is there. The reader then becomes convinced by this welcoming attitude that you, too, could marry on Block Island; that you, too, could have parents who live in Bermuda; and that you, too could know that seafood display equipment c…
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…amp would agree that there is a need for reform of the federal nonprofit tax code, including fairer enforcement. And I while I can’t respond to everything in Bruce’s volley, I would be remiss not to correct him on my alleged double standard when it comes to public expression. Religion, unlike “deep environmentalism” occupies a distinct, and endlessly controversial place in our history, whereas “deep environment,” whatever its merits, does not. But…
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