Religion Dispatches
…ou need to know to keep on reading? I’d cheerfully watch that man read the phone book. So, when my buddy Rev. El Mundo sent me the link to the comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the pie…
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…hey still cared for me. And I can’t tell you how many times I remember the phone call she made and the letter he sent. To the rest of you, those I potlucked with, laughed with, held your hands, loved your babies, went to your weddings, your sickbeds, your moments of crisis: Where are you? Why have you let me go to what you believe to be perdition? Are you just too busy? Did I never matter that much? Have I fooled myself believing we were bonded fo…
Read More…eer put his hand on Monk’s shoulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.” Let’s read between the lines here: Monk is, quite literally, the best example of discrimination against Christians in the military that the Liberty Inst…
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…I’m not trading in my TREO, and I’m not canceling the media package on my phone or reducing the number of messages I sent through that magical device. I am not calling for a technology purge. I’m simply noting that technology comes with a price, and this price has something of a postmodern twist. By this I mean that tweeting and other high-tech modalities of exchange send information about happenings, attitudes, feelings, and events—but in a way…
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…when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child.” Dennis sighs on the phone when she thinks back on the past two years. “It’s changed our lives,” she said. “But I think we just had to do what’s right for our son. He was wronged.”…
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…fined as a vagrant. So members always carried five dollars and money for a phone call. Benjamin Zeller, author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, has also noted that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in a lot of self-deprecating humor because they were aware that mainstream society perceived them as crazy. This research led Jones to conclude that a comedy about Heaven’s Gate might not be as inappropriate as it sounds. “I could never make a come…
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[Jump to Update.] When I reach Dr. Ronald Yeomans on his cell phone Thursday evening, he is out fishing—just as his wife Helen has said he would be. After all, Dr. Yeomans has put in two long days at work. On Wednesday and Thursday he saw more than twice the usual number of patients at his abortion clinic, Aid For Women, in Kansas City, Kansas. But then, this has been an unusual few weeks. Since mid-June, Dr. Yeomans (and the other abortion prov…
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…e supremacist movements.” I catch up with the Rev. David Ostendorf by cell phone while he is waiting for a plane at an East Coast airport. He is the executive director of the CNC where Ward works. Ostendorf, A United Church of Christ minister, once led PrairieFire Rural Action, a group that tried to save family farms during a major agricultural economic crisis in the 1980s. “Back then we helped build a popular economic political movement among fam…
Read More…eteorite? Bomb? End of the world? We were freaked out. No television, cell phone, internet service. There was no way to find out what happened. Later that night, in the Mayan village, the men gathered outside our hut, talking about it in hushed voices. Lacking any better answers, my husband offered the theory that perhaps it was from aliens. We learned the source of the explosion the next morning. At 8:59, the space shuttle, taking a detour due to…
Read More…very country across the African continent. She told AFP the magazine’s two phone lines ring off the hook. But there is still a lot of opposition. Copies in some eastern Ugandan shops have been burned, and distributors in the west have been threatened. Nabagesera says she herself was threatened with legal action after one issue was delivered to a church. And Uganda’s ethics minister warned Nabagesera she is at risk of arrest for “promoting homosexu…
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