Religion Dispatches
…traception mandate, but they have only 200 votes in this election. If the American Bishops really want religious freedom, the last thing they should promote is a top-down demand to vote the way they say. Their attempts to make the Republican Party their new “partners” is not going as well as the USCCB would like. Voting for Republicans simply because they are pro-life and ignoring the poor certainly isn’t freedom to exercise one’s conscience. Bes…
Read More…Letter to Hollywood” from “Faith-Driven Consumer,” warning that 46 million ticket-buyers could be dissuaded from seeing the film, and pressure from the National Religious Broadcasters group. Then came the $26.5 million opening weekend of the Jesus movie Son of God, an adaptation of the History Channel series that the “Open Letter” praises. Now, Paramount seems ready to try again. Grace Hill Media is back on the case, releasing a series of behind-t…
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…er, she meets Jerry Ricks, a handsome LDS missionary who sends her a plane ticket to Utah after he leaves Austria. Jerry’s stint as a missionary exacerbates his hatred of rules; he’s unhappy to find himself saddled with a wife who insists everyone pray six or seven times a day and get out of bed early each morning for an hour of scripture reading. His wife, for her part, is beyond disappointed to find herself married to a man who cheats on her, us…
Read More…th us. Tap your toes with us. And as Phil says, get “HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY.” Ticket prices range from $100 for an individual seat to $10,000 for a “Commander” table. Last year, Robertson’s homophobic remarks to GQ magazine, along with his assertion that blacks were “happy” before the civil rights era, caused a temporary suspension of Duck Dynasty by the A&E network, and an outcry of so-called persecution from the family’s conservative supporters. In…
Read More…bserver reports that relations “soured” when “religious leaders questioned American’s support to pro-gay activists within Uganda.” The local organization says it is a victim of its anti-gay stance, which the donor finds unacceptable, although some sources claim IRCU failed to meet some of USAID’s rigorous accountability procedures. Suspension of funding was communicated to IRCU in a June 26 letter by USAID Country Director Lislie Reed. She told th…
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…has been narrated in terms of guilt, morality, undercover research, and/or American acculturation.) What we know less about, though, are the ways in which such mediums and magicians collaborated in their antagonism. In our collective fixation on repentant con-artists turned heroic myth-busters (Houdini) and cocksure secularists softened by the “real magic” of love (Stanley), we have paid insufficient attention to the (rather more common) “humbug”…
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…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…
Read More…Listen to a podcast of the Ticket 2016, during which I talked about religion in the 2016 presidential campaign with Austin, Texas NPR affiliate KUT’s Ben Philpott and the Texas Tribune’s Jay Root:…
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…nt in the minds of those who need to believe the stories we tell ourselves. A modern day Horatio Alger with plumber’s crack is much more appealing than the reality of a depreciating house, evaporating 401K, and dwindling American job market. Unfortunately, regardless of the characters and costumes that the McCain/Palin ticket parade this week, these are the real stories of our lives that we must eventually confront. Trick or Treat!!…
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…researchers share the unsurprising finding that “young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans.” What they may mean to say is traditional religious practices: weekly attendance at religious services, weekly scripture reading, daily prayer, and weekly meditation. (My guess is as good as yours on the greater expected frequency of prayer in the survey.) The Pew survey design is problematic—and this is wher…
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