Religion Dispatches
…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …
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…the flag that wants them destroyed They saw their names listed in the telephone directory of destruction They were trained to turn the other cheek by newspapers that misspelled, mispronounced and misunderstood their names and celebrated when death came and stole their final laundry ticket” -excerpt from “Puerto Rican Obituary” by Pedro Pietri Then the lights went out and the stage lit up, and 60,000 white people finally started paying attention….
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…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
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…mpaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am con…
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…nse to the ad — ‘2 Iyers, two Muslims and a couple of others. Let’s see!’” France: United Protestant Church OK’s blessings for same-sex marriages The United Protestant Church in France voted to allow its pastors to bless same-sex marriages, leaving it up to individual pastors and parishes to decide, reports Euronews.com, which says Protestants make up about two percent of the population most of them evangelicals opposed to same-sex marriage. North…
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…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…
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…alse—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the tarmac. The responding authorities found neither shooters nor evidence of any shots fired. The most likely explanation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from…
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…this is the case… [T]he danger posed by Islam is not new—it is familiar to France since the Seventeenth-Century. In fact, the history of France proves that such wars have already been waged and won. The recent history of Europe confirms that democracies eventually vanquish totalitarianism and fascism. We cannot doubt the Europe views itself at war, and, as Marion notes, this is not a new war. But the wars go back further than the Seventeenth-Centu…
Read More…ally accept Stéfanini’s credentials was seen as an indirect way of forcing France to pick another ambassador and avoid making a public statement on the issue. But the French media report on Wednesday indicated that Pope Francis has personally become involved in the diplomatic row. According to the report, Stéfanini had a “very discreet” 15-minute audience with the pontiff over the weekend, who said his objection to the French appointment was “noth…
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…olution” in France. He recalls that it was necessary to have “wealthy businessmen” willing to buy media outlets to build a right-wing media landscape from scratch, which had happened successfully in France—and thanks American conservatives for providing him with the strategies to create a conservative political infrastructure in France, modeled after the one in the US….
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