Religion Dispatches
…at cross purposes. My first thought was to kick myself for leaving my cell phone behind. This would have made a terrific picture. My second thought was to find a less obtrusive spot where I could watch to see how this excruciatingly slow drama would play out. But before I could move, my husband drifted up behind me in his kayak, took one look at the frog and snake and muttered, “I can’t take this.” Over my objections (“But it’s nature!”) Jeff stre…
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…ocial and mobile forms that have shaped relational practice both on- and offline, has generally retained the democratic, collaborative, transparent, and dialogical ethos of its earliest enthusiasts. No reasonable communicator these days, then, expects a passive mass of consumers to gobble up a magisterially-broadcast message whole, not having the opportunity to share their own, potentially influential, perspectives. Hence those Twitter hashtags a…
Read More…s right in front of us, difference is on our iPads, in our laptops, in our phones. We hold a whole world of difference every time we open a phone. And the response to in the world around is at best insult, and so often violence, a reality which is the living experience of many you here. Welby also addressed a January gathering of Primates, which voted to suspend the Episcopal Church from questions on doctrine or policy for three years because of i…
Read More…a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder killed Till…
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…was offended and let the email sender know. It led to a rich and powerful phone conversation later that day where we both came to an agreement that, if followed logically, the examples tell a story of a God who is either capricious or lacking in any real power. If God can put small delays in the path of a few people headed for the Twin Towers that day, why not do that to all of them? If God has the power to save some, why not save all? Why not pe…
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…home, despite traveling in the region for Church events, and has only briefly met my partner of 5 years once. Ted: …you have to remind yourself that there is nothing wrong with you, if they reject who you are, because it will make you question yourself, but there are people out there who will care about you, and build you up. While more and more people are leaving religion, we still don’t know much about individuals who leave fundamentalist, stri…
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…id she have the kind of consensual hetero sex that is rather like a mobile phone contract with a hidden pregnancy fee buried in the contract? [shrug] Nobody held a gun to her head, so she has no right to complain… or, you know, make her own healthcare decisions. (The crassest versions of this argument are those dazzlingly astute Didn’t want ____? You shouldn’t have had sex! lines of logic that crop up in every mainstream newspaper comment thread a…
Read More…t Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into an anti-Mormon ad lib, it does not make for a concerted anti-Mormon effort. (Leave that to orthographically challenged “Heaven is Easy” ministry in Florida.) May cool heads prevail as the race heats up in its fina…
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…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…
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