Religion Dispatches
…good he did and evil he allowed, is long dead. Rebecca helped me remember the grace of forgiveness for the living people who suffer harm. So in the afterglow or aftermath of Francis’ historic visit, the most important take-away may be the old sinner in the white cap who captured so many eyes and hearts here in the US—who reminded us that like him, the church itself is only human….
Read More
…iates from the patriarchal ideal of “heteronormative uncontracepted sex in monogamous marriage.” Sections 243 and 299 would also disappoint any divorced and remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion openly. Pope Francis says they should be treated with care and kindness and respect, but he stops short of giving them access to receiving Communion. He offers the same condescension to LGBT Catholics in Section 250 when he says should be treat…
Read More
…or making me a defender of Muslims, but it was New York that did that. The city of my birth, the city under attack, was also the city that refused to retreat into cowardice. I have nearly a dozen stories of people who said to me, in either words or deeds, that if you are a New Yorker, it does not matter your faith; come and grieve with us. I traveled the country giving talks about Muslims after 9/11, but the safest, warmest, and most trusting I ev…
Read More
…h 2.1 million people. Recently I heard that some 13,000 people move to the city each month, which can be best described as clumps of skyscrapers along massive highways, some 6-8 lanes in each direction. But though it’s called the United Arab Emirates, the population is overwhelmingly South Asian, especially in Dubai—they form the service and labor class, but many South Asians are wealthy professionals and businesspersons. Dubai and the UAE have hi…
Read More
…NDFL, is just a block away from Washington Square Park, in one of New York City’s most chic areas. For the price of two entrees at Denny’s (plus a dessert), you can drop in for a 45-minute session that includes a brief introduction, a guided meditation, and a debrief Q&A with one of MNDFL’s 27 teachers. Special deals are available for your first month of visits. “In this branded form, it offers both health benefits and pleasure, and it can be deli…
Read More
…ocess has now been the living center of my life for half a century. I have moved to a different city, taught and learned in different schools, prayed in different gatherings from other prayer-books I have helped to write myself. I was drawn to a new understanding of the early rabbis as radicals, and studied to become a rabbi as radical as they had been—a rabbi who could join a rabbinate that was a midrash on rabbinic tradition. (Now I know what mi…
Read More…eeney that dug into sensitive community issues like the shunning of former Mormons and esoteric elements of LDS temple ceremonies. Sweeney even managed to put high-ranking LDS Church leaders on the defensive on camera. Last weekend, at the worldwide LDS Semi-Annual General Conference, it was Church leaders’ turn to broadcast their own messages about Mormonism, preaching the importance of Christian service, forgiveness, and obedience, and offering…
Read More
…cation, other ways of thinking into the classroom. I agree, but not in the way the movie and its proponents argue. When they push to ‘teach intelligent design (or creationism or other alternatives to science),’ they mean to do so on equal footing with science. As most any scientist will tell you, this won’t work because the idea of an Intelligence or a Creator, and most similar ideas of religion, are non-falsifiable, non-testable, in the way that…
Read More…s unwise, if not illegal. It created a paper trail strongly suggesting the city’s motive for denying Country Mill Farms’ application for the farmers market was based on the city’s dislike of a practice that the Tennes family claimed was central to their faith. The timing of the city’s revision to its vendor agreement—after officials had encouraged Tennes to voluntarily abstain from the farmers market and expressed skepticism about the legality of…
Read More
…born from both topography and labor. What other city would gladly call its most famous football play the “Immaculate Reception” without finding it irreverent? After all, this is the place where Polish immigrants built a miniature replica of St. Peter’s and where Marian shrines populate the bluff overlooking the Park Way, where an incarnation of Vishnu resides at the Sri Venkateswara temple in the Penn Hills and Hasidic rabbis offer much needed pra…
Read More