Religion Dispatches
…ve that the CIA interrogators really “believed” that waterboarding session number 151 was the one that was going to do the trick, succeeding where 150 previous attempts had failed. Protecting Us from the Worst in Ourselves If we have learned nothing else from the shocking photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, then it is this: torture is not about utilitarian calculation—it is about humiliation. It is forbidden because men and women under the stress of…
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…continued growth of the religiously unaffiliated “really remarkable.” The number of Americans identifying with no religion grew by 19 million from 2007 to 2014, and now the religiously unaffiliated are “more numerous,” said Smith, than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. Much of the rise of the “nones” is attributable to religious switching, mainly from Catholicism and mainline Protestantism. One-fifth of Americans raised Christian are now…
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…, and then I say, thinking of all the ruined gay lives, this really is the number that no man can number. It’s also interesting to me that “Writing It Out” is followed by the section “War on the Children.” Such an organization suggests that the latter was a reaction against the former—that as these voices emerge, there’s this really virulent reaction culturally against them. And also it’s so very political. As the church has become more right-win…
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…s of forced cremation of Muslims who died from coronavirus.” As of December 10, 2020, there have been 146 Covid deaths in Sri Lanka with a disproportionate number coming from the Muslim community; despite making up less than 10% of the population, Muslims account for nearly half of the reported deaths. A Muslim leader in Sri Lanka informed the authors that the number is actually higher, and that 82 Muslims have died, with over 70 cremations. The c…
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…as been a success story, writes Sieff, with the HIV/AIDS rate dropping from 12 percent to 5 percent since 2002 while the number of people receiving treatment has more than doubled in five years to over 700,000. But the new anti-gay crackdown could frighten people away from receiving treatment. Even though Tanzania’s penal code refers to homosexuality as a “gross indecency,” the government had long permitted organizations to help gay men who had AI…
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…which predisposed them to be skeptical of trade unionism. In the turbulent 1870s and 1880s, as the rank and file, increasingly predominated by the foreign born, repeatedly took its protest to the streets, Protestant leaders called for violent suppression of “the mob.” The Catholic hierarchy was less prone to such nativist excesses and yet harbored deep reservations of its own about organized labor. Even as the Vatican articulated growing support…
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…people are by intensity, measured with the simple hack of subtracting the number of people Strongly Opposed to same-sex marriage from the number Strongly In Favor. Not surprisingly, since the Unitarian-Universalists only had 6 percent opposed, their position on the chart hardly budged at all. Other groups traveled a little more. Mainline Baptists, for example, strongly disapprove just a little more than they strongly approve. Evangelical Baptists…
Read More…Americans that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, 40 years ago on November 18, 1978. STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination) published a four-part series that presents its best evidence for asserting that those deaths were mass murder rather than collective suicide, as initially reported in the news media. While Scientology may have a stake in how this story is told, the series actually raises two important questions. First, how i…
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…ican American communities a disservice and fails to consider why a growing number are shifting away from belief— a shift that is tied to a long history of African Americans challenging belief in God. This narrowing of African American’s opinions on belief misses an important point. “Free thought,” in a variety of forms, has a presence in African American life that is centuries old. To question or deny God is as African American as is embracing the…
Read More…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…
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