Religion Dispatches
…ts, tourists and other visitors—from entering the country as a response to last week’s California shootings. He went on to defend this egregious statement on Good Morning America by comparing his plan as similar to FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This statement and the crowds of Trump supporters cheering for him have finally struck a chord in the US public sphere. The other candidates have called him out with House Spea…
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…regime had threatened his wife. Chen then appealed directly to Congress by phone during a hearing saying that he and his family are not safe in China. On Friday, the Chinese government announced that Chen could apply to study abroad. The Pro-Life Spin Cycle Anti-abortion news and opinion websites have taken to calling Chen a “pro-life dissident,” which is fundamentally misleading. And though he’s been described as an opponent of the One Child poli…
Read MoreOn the heels of his rousing floor speech last week that got picked up by conservative media, Republican US Representative Mike Kelly is in the spotlight today for likening the contraception mandate to the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks. Yeah, you know? I’ve got nothing. Maybe he really believes in that equivalency. Maybe he thinks that the contraception mandate is a lot like an attack by a foreign power. Maybe when he sat down and thought, “What’s…
Read More…r family, publishing their personal details online so that activists could phone and text-message “Agata” to dissuade her from her choice. They followed Agata to a second clinic when the family attempted the procedure there; charging in the media that the girl was being pressured into the abortion by Planned Parenthood and informing the police that Agata’s mother was “inciting her daughter to abortion,” leading to the illegal separation of the gir…
Read More…nd said a volunteer group of equality-supporting Catholics is doing weekly phone banks. Levin mentioned last Friday’s press conference with equality-supporting African American clergy from Maryland and national figures including Rev. Al Sharpton. Also speaking was Rev. Christine Wiley of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington DC; Wiley was a co-chair of DC Clergy United for Marriage Equality, which played a visible role during the…
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…y came of it… [Crutcher’s] efforts were, however, carried out over the telephone and the conversations were primarily with receptionists. Rose takes the effort farther. Video is far more compelling than recordings of phone calls. According to the Los Angeles Times: Rose, the third of eight children, grew up in San Jose. Her father is an engineer for Sun Microsystems. She was home schooled… and also attended a part-time Christian school and a junio…
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…have contributed to oppression.” A similar situation happened at Yale just last month when, after pressure from students, the university renamed its Calhoun College due to John C. Calhoun’s support of slavery as a “positive good.” Also last fall at the Jesuit Georgetown, the president made an unprecedented move to atone for the role Georgetown once played in the slave trade by offering preferential status in admissions to descendants of slaves. Th…
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…d as kin by those who share their heritage, age, or religion. I remember a phone call with my doctor immediately after the election of Barack Obama. We were rejoicing at the victory and he, an African American, said, “You cannot believe what this means to my family.” For Catholics, the election of John F. Kennedy and the successful work for justice of the Kennedy brothers and sisters were grace moments of acceptance and vindication; balm on the wo…
Read More…far between. The New York Times builds its whole story out of a handful of phone calls and an email. But the article indicates that those who run the various nonprofits that help soldiers achieve conscientious objector status expect a floodgate of calls if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is formally repealed. The good news is that the groups don’t think there is legal basis for the claims. In the “don’t ask, don’t tell” cases, Ms. McNeil concluded that there…
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…n edited and condensed version of our conversations, which took place over phone and email. FEBRUARY 2017 Since the election, how has your relationship with white evangelicalism shifted? Sundays are hard. The last few months, as the temperature has turned up, I just get angry when sermons don’t address the injustice and violence in our country. I do not want to leave the first church that ever felt like a home to me. I’ve spent my entire Christian…
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