Religion Dispatches
…for “civility”: In the aftermath of the horrible and senseless shooting in Arizona and some of the troubling responses to it, we, as leaders in the faith community, affirm with one voice our principled commitment to civil discourse in our nation’s public life. The President rightly said that no act of incivility can be blamed for the profoundly evil shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the tragic killing and wounding of 19 of her const…
Read More
…defense. As in the Plowshares trial, earlier this year a federal court in Arizona denied a RFRA defense brought by an activist with the No More Deaths movement who had provided humanitarian aid to undocumented migrants who had crossed the southern border. This landscape is not all bleak, however: courts have found for some non-Christians seeking religious exemptions, such as a Sikh who successfully sued the Army in 2015 over a grooming code that…
Read More
…clock is enough to cast doubt on the veracity of its claims. So what if X number of people say to rescind the invitation? Last I heard, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins was hosting the party. Obviously, this is not simply about a graduation speaker. The President of the United States is being instrumentalized in a long Catholic theo-political struggle that will not be resolved on this playing field, though it is a chance for everyone to show which…
Read More…e movements toward safer working conditions and unionization, led in large numbers by Jewish workers and organizers. It was this crucible of working-class life that shaped not only the political consciousness of the immigrant Jews, but also their descendants down to the present day (contemporary Jews are said to have the wallets of Episcopalians, but to vote like African Americans). The documentary also gives due attention to the Yiddish culture t…
Read More
On Tuesday, the special election in Arizona’s eighth congressional district could produce the fifth Hindu member of the U.S. House. While Democrat Hiral Tipirneni faces long odds—despite polls showing otherwise—in a reliably red district formerly held by GOP Rep. Trent Franks (who had issues with moral hypocrisy), her run highlights a key constituency Democrats need to win back the House: Hindus. Nearly two years after the saturation of media cov…
Read More…titutions of marriage and the family would have taken a hit in places like Arizona, Florida and California. Indeed, in Florida and California, their vote proved to be decisive…Because those who reject traditional values and religion voted heavily for Barack Obama, it’s a sure bet the culture war will only get hotter. We expect to be quite busy.” – Catholic Vote On Marriage And Family: Much To Cheer About, Bill Donahue of the Catholic League for Re…
Read More…In the latest RD/Bloggingheads collaboration, RD contributing editor Peter Laarman interviews RD blogger and contributing writer Anthea Butler on such topics as: Fearing lesbians in high offices Man rents boy Wisconsin’s Muslims vs. “I want my country back” cheese-heads Arizona: The Hispanic Alabama? The rise of an American-style fascism Catholic Bishops granted free agency…
Read More…convicted rapist Warren Jeffs on their compound at Short Creek on the Utah/Arizona border. Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault last week. The hand of St. James made it back to Reading Abbey just in time for St. James Day. A school board in Virginia has removed the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet from its sixth-grade reading lists because they found the book to be anti-Mormon. The Boston Globe reminds us all that the t…
Read More
…ing to overturn election results in hotly-contested states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. These suits are being quickly rejected by jurists across the political spectrum, and may result in bar discipline for the lawyers who file them, but they still do serious harm to the system by undermining the norm of accepting defeat with grace and dignity. As if to prove that the problem goes much deeper than the national level,…
Read More…upport for humane treatment of immigrants and immigration reform through a number of quiet moves designed to promote a more informed and compassionate conversation on immigration among LDS people. These efforts have been spurred by the high visibility of LDS legislators like Stephen Sandstrom in Utah and Russell Pearce, author of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070, as well as by firm pressure by LDS Latino immigrants. Today, Latinos make up the large…
Read More