Religion Dispatches
…idea what was happening to me. It would’ve been nice to have known that my spiritual anguish didn’t mean I was rejecting faith, or being rejected by the object of my faith. Such anguish might be a purging; God nudging us to reject something in ourselves, an error in our acts or our aspirations. But I was never taught Islam as a journey, even though I came from a religious family. I grew up in an environment where religion and religious ideas frequ…
Read More…while sustaining or creating thousands of American jobs—up to an estimated 127,000. That’s Muslim money buying American goods, creating American jobs. That’s us benefiting from growth in the Gulf and Southeast Asia. That’s the world growing together. The Muslim world’s democratic convulsions—Indonesia preceded the Arab world by roundabout a decade—are responses to economic lethargy, with booming populations ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosp…
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…n, other parents objected and police ordered the parents to leave. Romania: 1,000 people attend pride parade The Associated Press’s Alison Mutler reported that about 1,000 people joined a gay pride march in Bucharest, which came after lawmakers approved an initiative to amend the constitution to restrict marriage to a man and a woman. Australia: Tennis stars spar over marriage equality A new development in a long bitter public debate over marriage…
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…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…
Read More…at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and attempted to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a magical ritual that combined Islamic elements with shamanic practices. On Thursday Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as Rajah Bomoh Sedunia Nujum, delivered a press conference (in which he demonstrated a squint that bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Robertson.) He initially stated that he had been invited to perform his ritual by one of Malaysia’s “…
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…shootings in 2009: that of Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 servicemen and women and wounded 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, and George Sodini, who killed 3 women and wounded 12 at a Pennsylvania fitness club. Both men had no friends, work issues, difficulties meeting women, and felt victimized—Sodini by women and Hasan by his fellow soldiers for being a Muslim. And both men intended to die. Sodini shot himself before he could be stoppe…
Read More…help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….
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…Pride Walk. Colombia: Profile of trans musician and activist explores her spiritual life Sentiido profiles Sarah Gonzalez, a musician and transgender activist whose “spiritual life is linked to a deep respect for nature, an idea enriched by Buddhist and shamanic practices.” Sarah says that struggling with her identity, she prayed to the Virgin Mary to be “fixed,” before understanding that Catholic doctrine was standing in the way of an authentic…
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…by Pentecostal students at Sharon Children’s Homes and Schools in February, 1948. Weary of what they felt was a “spiritual drought” in institutional Pentecostalism, they were in search of fresh spiritual experience. This is a driving aspect of NAR to this day. This anti-denominationalism led to accusations that the movement was taking members and churches out of institutional Pentecostalism. This was certainly a factor when the General Council of…
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…m terrible at thinking of titles and was rather pleased with Moving by the Spirit. Having to come up with something else is hard! In any case, the idea of “moving,” and the Pentecostal version of this, which is what I mean by “moving by the Spirit,” serves as an organizing motif for the book. So, the current title gives you a reasonable idea of what it’s about. How do you feel about the cover? I love it! So many books about Pentecostalism have cov…
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