Religion Dispatches
…ding up to this year’s election.“ (For more on Pray the Vote, go here) The promo for Craig Detweiler’s new book Into the Dark reads: “Detweiler, a well-respected film expert and media spokesperson on Hollywood and Christianity, examines forty-five twenty-first-century films that resonate theologically—from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Little Miss Sunshine—offering groundbreaking insight into their scriptural connections and theological applica…
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…inciple that imagining creates reality has captivated modern readers,” the promo copy explains. The publisher probably didn’t expect the book to resonate quite so uncomfortably with the political moment when they chose November 8th—Election Day—as its publication date. But indeed, Donald Trump’s distinctive style has roots in the spiritual tradition of which At Your Command and The Secret are both a part. Neville was just ahead of his time. Born i…
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…s not enough to purchase a gallon of milk there! It barely buys a Big Mac! Today no one can claim ignorance. Workers have journeyed to the U.S. to give gut-wrenching accounts of their travails. Journalists and watchdog groups have exhaustively exposed the injustices workers making Nike products endure. Read, for example, this recent article based on interviews of eighteen women in Vietnam who have experienced intimidation, abuse, and threats but s…
Read More…id showcased anti-LGBT rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Mexico: President promotes constitutional guarantee of LGBT equality; Mormon Church objects As Mexico’s complicated march toward nationwide marriage equality continues, President Enrique Peña Nieto wrote in Huffington Post about initiatives he introduced in May to establish a constitutional right to marry, “independently of gender identity or sexual orientation,” as part of a broader effort…
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…than their salaries might suggest. At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Revenue Service to include their counterparts in other religious traditions.) The first subsection, 107(1), allows a minister to exclude from taxable income…
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…l Justice Reform “has lambasted the Aceh administration’s Islamic criminal code bylaw, or Qanun Jinayat, saying it could potentially provoke discrimination and over-criminalization of LGBT communities and other vulnerable groups.” The Aceh province is governed by the conservative Islamist legal code. Notes the Jakarta Post: Qanun Jinayat imposes criminal sanctions on both Muslims and non-Muslims found to have consumed liquor, dated in public or ca…
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…uples. The third criterion Dr. King identifies is that “an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” For same sex couples to have legal access just like heterosexual couples…
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…warning on the website RadicalIslam.org, maintained by the Clarion Fund. “Today you can find closed communities of Radical Muslims across the United States promoting Radical Islamic ideology and living under localized versions of Shari’ah.” This view that shari’ah is a threat to the constitution, to capitalism, and to American liberty helps explain the rash of attempts to “ban” shari’ah in the states. Rep. Gerald Gay, the Wyoming legislator spons…
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…our church—our church is in a coalition that helps operate an orphanage in Honduras, and a group from our church, a group of young people and a group of adults go down every year, and here’s this woman, she’s probably my age, she’s not young, and she goes down there every year. She spends ten days living in this orphanage. Well, it’s this huge act of hope. It’s not much, but we have to identify and celebrate those hopers, and the other thing is th…
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…greater suffering” than the death threats by police officers in his native Honduras; the 14-month-old baby returned to his mother after 85 days covered in lice and dirt. At this point even if all the children are returned to their families, something that is not at all certain, the experience will likely have longer-term effects, possibly even on the children’s genetic codes. Yet one group has remained largely silent: the “pro-family” movement com…
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