Religion Dispatches
…become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the phone to Sarah Palin, and counsel her about her kids’ activity on Facebook. Bristol Palin found time from her “Dancing with the stars” practice to get on Facebook with her sister Willow to ride on a friend who had the chutzpah to say “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is failing so hard right now.” Willow’s response was to call the poster a gay slur, and Bristol jumping in the fray to r…
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…c school were often held at the Mormon church, and vice-versa. Most of my classmates, virtually all my friends, and much of my family were Mormon. At church I was commanded to keep a journal, examining my life for the narrative threads that guide my choices and determine my character. I will never shake this habit, no matter what. Truth be told, if the LDS church somehow lost all it leaders and members tomorrow and existed only as a historical rel…
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…mmunication] choices and to foster human relations that are truly deep and lasting.” But this does not mean that relationships developed in global, digital spaces are any less “real” than those with the neighbor down the street to whom we nod in passing, but with whom we never otherwise engage in any “deeply true” way. Moreover, in the era of mobile technologies, the social isolation previously associated with internet-based communications is radi…
Read More…or one of the tarawih. I finally finished the Qur’an reading I had started last year and decided that now I’m at the point where it will take two years to read through. To be merciful with our aging is like Allah’s mercy with those parents: it’s a part of the Divine nature and I am grateful. Finally, and of course unique for this year, I learned that it is possible to blog your way through Ramadan, sharing many ideas along the way, and yet still k…
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…dict XVI apparently agrees, (as noted in these pages by Elizabeth Drescher last month) and has stated recently, “I would like then to invite Christians, confidently and with an informed and responsible creativity, to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible.” As if Zuckerberg’s kudos from Time weren’t enough, one of the year’s top films made him a hero (of sorts). David Fincher’s The Social Network tells a creation…
Read More…ernet technological and capacity innovation before the advent of the smart phone. And if we want to start a serious conversation about where presidential candidates get their money and how ethical that money is, let’s do it. I have a laundry list of labor, environmental, feminist, and human rights issues with multinational corporations I’d love to start working through. But don’t give me a thin, opportunistic connect-the-Mormon-dots story and pr…
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…es, but imagine a latchkey kid saying “I’m sorry, my mom can’t come to the phone right now” instead of “Nope! I’m home alone and defenseless!” and you’ve got the basic idea. Not surprisingly, though, a lot of the people who are most particular about Catholic teaching—people otherwise likely to be sympathetic to Rose’s goals—aren’t convinced that’s what’s going on here. And these folks clash, from time to time, with Rose’s fanboys and fangirls. It…
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…or exhorted on homosexuals to repent or be punished by God before the microphone was snatched away one of Kato’s supporters. It might have seemed that the last person the activist’s friends would turn to for support at the moment would be another religious leader. Especially given that the church in Uganda was at the head of the drive for the draconian anti-homosexuality bill still pending in Parliament. But 79-year-old Bishop Christopher Senyonjo…
Read More…es about the Proposition 8 debate—or any other controversial issue—in the class she taught each week. Facing the prospect of being denied access to the temple and resigning her Sunday School position, she decided to take the video down. But all that changed last Sunday. As she sat at her computer, Melanie S. realized that her decision to take her video down had not strengthened but rather bruised her relationship to her faith. In yielding to press…
Read More…example of their promotion of intelligent design in public school science class, see their 1999 booklet Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook. Also, in the case of Dover, Discovery initially sent pro-ID DVDs, such as Signature in the Cell, to school board members. But when it looked like the case was headed for a First Amendment trial that they would inevitably lose, they dropped back to urging board members to a…
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