Religion Dispatches
…n 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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…e for president and only the second Roman Catholic to run on a major-party ticket. Graham assured Kennedy in no uncertain terms that, contrary to rumors, the evangelist had no intention of raising the “religious issue” during the course of the campaign. Eight days later, however, Graham convened a gathering of American Protestant ministers in Montreaux, Switzerland, to discuss how to derail Kennedy’s campaign. The follow-up to the Montreaux meetin…
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…things spicy in the bedroom, flirts with a police officer to get out of a ticket, and tells Corinne to trust her body, that it will tell her what she needs. The film is unexpectedly funny, and much of the humor happens when the two women are together. It is rare to see a film that presents friendship between women as a powerful source of laughter, resistance, knowledge, and love. So many of the films I see in theaters are written by men for men a…
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…choice, a result of overbearing mothers and distant fathers, and a one-way ticket to hell. “I won’t risk our family not being together in the next life,” she declares. “I’m healed!” The film hews to the conventions of Lifetime, in which tragedy inevitably leads to personal growth. There are archetypal characters: the jock brother who makes gay jokes, the sinister psychiatrist, the judgmental minister from the Griffith’s church, and the sympathetic…
Read More…on Sunday mornings. She wasn’t driving a bus, but a dispute over a traffic ticket involving a veiled woman in France has intensified controversy over French anti-veil legislation. Regardless of whether or not you get the religion of soccer, seminarians in Rome are quite happy to put on a pair of cleats. Forget the U.S. tie with England, I’m more interested in the Redemptoris Mater win over the North American Martyrs. Back in Los Angeles, Cardinal…
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…per tickets. Up to the manuscript room, where I handed the ID card and one ticket to the clerk. She gave me a key to a locker, where I had to leave all my belongings except one pencil (not a pen, with which I could deface a manuscript) and a notebook. Reentering the reading room, I had to display my pencil and notebook to the clerk to get back my ID card and the ultimate prize: a plastic block with a number on it. I was then permitted to sit in a…
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…hday meal. I could find them “distasteful,” or “unappetizing,” or any of a number of options my mother would suggest. My brother could “disagree” with Nixon’s policies, but he could not profess hate for the man. “You don’t know him personally. You cannot possibly ‘hate’ him,” she would insist. “Hate” was a big-ticket word not to be squandered on annoying siblings or corrupt politicians. My mother’s semantic ethics on this point have stayed with me…
Read More…nt of the delegates were members of minority groups, and male delegates outnumbered women delegates about two to one. To judge by these numbers, the Republicans still play to an America conceived as predominantly white. Racial prejudice against Obama appears in several ways. One is the denial by racists of their prejudice but their attribution of racism to others—a ploy known as projection. (Pollsters are having a difficult time estimating the ext…
Read More…gains. President Obama was elected just one short year ago on a prochoice ticket. If the electorate sees that a woman’s right to choose is not a core value but simply a bargaining chip to be laid on the table when the going gets tough, there will be a price to pay. We call on the Democratic leadership and all of our elected representatives to put forward healthcare reform that can be endorsed by the American people, not just the US bishops. The A…
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…exercise clause into a broadly applicable special rights provision. A free ticket for the religious to exempt themselves from federal and state laws—most importantly, public health and anti-discrimination laws. JS: Do these special rights provisions apply equally? The court is on a mission to remake free-exercise law. Not too long ago, it held that religious people and organizations could not claim special exemptions to generally applicable law so…
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