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…
Read More…immediately gave away more than 35% of it to my other siblings, and to her partner. I paid back the expenses from the funeral and put the rest in savings. Still, it left me no doubt about being able to afford to make hajj. This week I paid the remaining balance on my hajj account and submitted the requested paperwork. But here’s the thing: according to most jurists, I am not allowed to inherit from my sister. My sister had no children and was neve…
Read More…ear in agreement with what we are doing. I may ask for your church’s name, phone number, and Web site to verify your stand. What I see as the sin at the heart of Grizzard and Jones’ actions—as well as at the heart of anyone who seeks to violently control the free will or belief of others—is lust. These men lust for control; and in their lust they objectify others, people they call “heretics” or “sinners.” Lust, in and of itself, is not a bad thing…
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…morning, I woke up and I told her, I said: I feel that I’m being called to pastor a church. And she said, Well, you are pastoring a church. And I said, No, another church, away from here. And I cried again. Because I didn’t want to go. I was doing fine. I intended to be an old lady wheeled down the aisle of that church. About a year after that, in 1991, we started City of Refuge. We were about fifteen people when we started, being intentional abou…
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…fight. If someone had pressed into his fingers at that pivotal moment the phone number for The Trevor Project, he might reach out and hear a voice of reassurance, a voice that gave him hope for life by, in part, repudiating the so-called biblical teaching that who he is amounts to an offense against God. If he’d had a sense of belonging to a community that embraced him for who he is, maybe his hope wouldn’t be so fully shattered. But while other…
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…and second Bush presidencies. A few other stories find their way in: the Spanish oppress the Puebloans; Jefferson cuts up the Bible, saving only the moral maxims; Rabbi Wise invents Reform Judaism; Muslims and other non-Christian groups arrive in large numbers. But this is primarily a story of how religion has interacted with some of the big events of American history. American religious expression—its music and art, its stories of internal spiri…
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…his evangelical theme—but since I teach about end-times discourse I try to pay at least passing attention to evolving trends, and this twist seems mildly noteworthy because I have seldom heard it. Although I spoke of Lindsey’s “short answer,” I hasten to add that viewers will learn it only after lengthy sequences about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United Nations, a case for the U.S or Israel attacking Iran, and a pitch for the phone ministry…
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…itioning from that, and “shedding off that false image,” says Kaggwa, was “painful, painful in the sense that it made me lost in a way, but also painful in terms of social perceptions. I had to explain every day what was happening.” Twenty years later, at age 40, Kaggwa is an advocate for sexual minorities. “When it comes to gay people, I may not be gay,” says Kaggwa, “but I understand very well what it means, the courage and the audacity it takes…
Read More…publicanism,” Viguerie said in a press release: “The next stage of the Tea Party movement — Tea Party 2.0 — means taking over the GOP at every level from precinct captain to state chairman, and nominating one of our own for president.” Also busy tomorrow will be the architect of the religious right from the 1990s, former director of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed. Reed is now founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition—and he’s no…
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…managing some how to successfully raise five children, mostly as a single parent. I had three stops to make with my youngest daughter, baby in tow, and mostly he and I sat in the car; he asleep, and me trying to write a blog on my iPad. Let the record show, I was not successful, despite my best intentions. I managed to drop that daughter off just in time to head to Oakland as I had told my middle daughter I would. She needed assistance with the b…
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