Religion Dispatches
…and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone. Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in respect to the political and cultural stances and demographic constituencies of the disting…
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…21—and it has been conducted over almost two decades, while Baylor’s first numbers come from 2006. Because researchers will inevitably craft their survey according to their own interests and assumptions, the ARIS doesn’t give respondents a list of religious identities to choose from. Instead it asks, simply, “What is your religion, if any?” and categorizes the results after the fact. “What we get is true, democratic vox populi,” boasts Kosmin. Thi…
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…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were openi…
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…eir microwave, not to bring their toaster oven and not to bring their cell phone. It was almost funny. Following that announcement from the now infamous loud “speaker,” he said that fajr prayer would be at 5:40. I should have thought more clearly about this, but as it stands, I have three different prayer time schedules: my iphone has one from the Ipray app; and I printed one off line from Islamicity; then collected one from my favorite mosque, wh…
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…protesters who posted to the site and flooded the archbishop’s office with phone calls. “If there is any doubt about Archbishop Niederauer’s ability to uphold the basic teachings of morality,” wrote another, “his inactivity in clearing out the homosexualists and sodomists from his archdiocese speaks for itself.” Be Still and Know is the brainchild of John Loschmann, the director of Drama at Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Atherton, a Bay Area s…
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…new responsibilities—and move his household from Phoenix, Arizona to Cleveland, Ohio where the UCC is headquartered. He says he is going to call the UCC to seek to rigorously adapt to the 21st century by considering new ways of “being church.” His vision is a bold one, but on the phone he quietly shrugs it off, saying it’s just a continuation of the Congregational tradition of more than 400 years. ________________ Frederick Clarkson: In Beyond Re…
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…from ministry, locked down at home, and “trying to be of service over the phone and zoom” to people in his church facing another pandemic. Pieters is part of a unique cohort for whom the current pandemic is both eerily familiar and puzzlingly different. LGBT Christian clergy who ministered in queer communities in the 1980s and 90s are engaging Covid-19 using some lessons learned from AIDS ministry in the years before treatment. They’re also grapp…
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…m the government’s efforts to impose “gender ideology.” Serbia: Activists plan protest at Turkey’s embassy Activists in Serbia are planning a protest in front of the Belgrade embassy of Turkey on Monday in response to the recent murder of trans activist Hande Kader in Istanbul. Organizers also said the gathering would focus on frequently unpunished attacks on LGBT people in Serbia. Demonstrators also protested Kader’s death in Istanbul last Sunday…
Read More…along with several others like it — to achieve conservative victory. This plan includes running statewide television and radio ads, sending direct mail to targeted voters, and operating phone banks — all geared toward defeating Harry Reid in November. DeMint apparently does not think the Reconstructionists are an irrelevant fringe movement, as many others seem to think, since he’s paid money to email them and apparently expects that it will be wor…
Read More…n Paul II, Pope Benedict sent the following text message to Italian mobile phone users: “Let us go forth in the joy of the risen Lord and trusting in his permanent help.” JPII had been texting Italians with a “thought of the day” while he was still alive, so Benedict was simply carrying on this tradition. Pope Benedict has more recently used text messaging to communicate with attendees throughout this year’s World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. H…
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