Religion Dispatches
…s do: the acts of service performed for one another. Romney gave plenty of service as a lay pastoral leader for Boston-area congregations. But, as Ann Romney explained, “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” (Tagg Romney made a similar point earlier in the day about how Mormons are taught not to brag about acts of interpersonal service. This is an important way…
Read More
…hristmas Eve service at my family’s Lutheran church was always my favorite service of the year. The candles, the carols, and the quiet reverence soothed my soul, even as I drove myself and my little sister across town to switch between our divorced parents’ homes at the stroke of midnight. These days, neither of us goes to church, and my mother’s Pagan practices feel like the closest reflection of my own knotted spiritual beliefs. And while I seek…
Read More
…was able to do. While always professing Christian ideals of selflessness, service, and fellowship they created a readily available platform for use by various dictators and haters and murderers of whatever stripe and whatever faith. This is quite an achievement, you have to admit. In an early sequence, Jeff Sharlet is vetted to join a kind of Christian frat house called Ivanwald, essentially a youth indoctrination center maintained by The Fellows…
Read More
…r a new phenomenon nor a rare one, so any discussion of faith-based social service delivery by either political party must include community organizers. Saul Alinsky initiated the idea of faith-based community organizing in the 1930s, challenging people in impoverished urban areas to address their neighborhoods’ various socioeconomic and crime-related challenges themselves — in partnership with local religious leaders, who had the wherewithal to l…
Read More
…rculated email, and on his blog. London reportedly told the Religious News Service of Haggard’s plans to hold prayer services, “When you think of the ethics of that, it, to me, just defies explanation.” Not to be left out of the media feeding frenzy, other high-profile pastors in the conservative evangelical Christian community quickly piled on. C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded the World Prayer Center with Haggard and is well known for the exorcism…
Read More
…and 43% oppose. In all other religious groups, more than half support open service (except for black Protestants, who favor it 46% to 41%). Even among weekly church attenders (the mysterious gold standard for who the allegedly truly religious are), there’s 49%-40% support for open service. UPDATE: The ruling doesn’t, as Zach Roth suggests at the Upshot, revitalize the culture wars — they’ve never gone away. But the culture warriors quoted here are…
Read More…as highlight economic language in the Bible, it would be a valuable public service. Even better would be highlighting the very un-Christian ways violent rhetoric is used in service of economic privilege. Haters and militiamen should not be able to hide behind the screen of faith, that much should be right in the unions’ wheelhouse, as they say. So how about it Mr. Trumka? Sponsor a little tikkun olam and repair the social fabric of the nation at t…
Read More…cked out under DADT. He called DADT a “cloud of fear” that gay and lesbian service members live under – a constant threat of being kicked out if their sexual orientation is revealed. People like Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (and a marine vet, btw), wants to keep that cloud of fear hovering over gay and lesbian service members. He claims ending DADT will violate the religious liberty of chaplains. ”Chaplains will be muzzl…
Read More…ve Federal financial assistance may use their facilities to provide social services without removing or altering religious art, icons, scriptures, or other symbols from these facilities. In addition, a faith-based organization that participates in a social service program may retain religious terms in its name, select its board members on a religious basis, and include religious references in its organization’s mission statements and other charter…
Read More
…ty. This tends to exclude members of particular faith traditions from jury service, as the Death Penalty Information center noted in 2005: “Catholics who have heeded their Church’s call to end the death penalty” are among those “believers of all stripes who… will not be able to serve even in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial.” (DPIC, “Blind Justice,” 6,) On January 8, the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty echoed…
Read More