Religion Dispatches
…on as part of my Bible-studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. They were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. It was an amazing world… As I said, it’s a really sweet essay. I hope everyone reads it, believers and non-believers alike….
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…The bill contains no provision for rape or incest. The Oklahoma State Medical Association opposes it. And according to Senator Jim Wilson, a Democrat from Tahlequah, the bill could criminalize in vitro fertilization and potentially make doctors liable for treating a woman who faces a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. Oh, but it gets worse: According to Wilson, Crain has argued in committee that in cases such as those, the law wasn’t even really…
Read More…ek after the Democrats’ predicted and predictable loss of the House, the Obama Administration is signaling that it will cave to conservative pressure and accept a continuation of the Bush tax cuts—even for those making over $250,000 per year. “We have to deal with the world as we find it,” said Obama’s top adviser, David Axelrod, explaining that given GOP control of the House there would be no way to maintain the tax cuts for the middle-class with…
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…e Vatican had issued a new encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI, “Truth, Proclamation and the Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age.” The tweet from @philritchie, sometimes drummer and Canon of Chelmsford Cathedral in rural Essex, arrived while I was mulling over a question Parker Palmer had posted just a bit earlier on his Facebook page about the relationship between violent words and images in broadcast media and violent acts. I’d added my two ce…
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…lvation, 2012, 9), and/or with becoming something other than human: Na’vi (Avatar), “prawns” (District 9), fish (Ponyo), frogs (The Princess and the Frog), or zombies (Zombieland). The humans we praised needed to be somehow super-human (Watchmen), or fulfillers of fantasy (Inglorious Basterds). Theologically these extra-human cinematic speculations challenged the idea of what it means to be made in the “image of God.” If the species is no longer w…
Read More…it’s being reported that the move is actually an effort to protect Romney against another round of flak from socially conservative and evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Marriott-porn issue flared up for a brief moment in July 2007. (Back then, Romney even came in for criticism from the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, in an editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of porn.”) I don’t buy it. Anyone who understands the traction of…
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…hat “[t]he Lord picked the best-looking one to work on His Project. I bet Mama Mary had a hand in it too.” Just as fervent is the praise over at First Things, following an October 2010 autobiographical piece by Rose. Commenter J. Trehan calls Rose “a 21st-century example of what Paul meant when he wrote to the Philippians (4:13) saying, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’” A comment from Charity enthuses, “When things begin to…
Read More…named for St. Valentine, who was jailed for defying a Roman imperial edict against performing marriages—Melanie could not help but recall the LDS Church’s efforts to ban same-sex marriage. In 2008, when LDS Church leaders asked members to support the Proposition 8 campaign in California, Melanie did as so many other observant Mormons: she searched her heart and mind and prayed earnestly for guidance. Then, she received an answer that she should no…
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…e a church for everyone. It’s the kind of thing you might not notice right away. Just another black church in a down-and-out urban neighborhood. But then you look to your left, at the gangly transgender woman with tattoos; or at the band, up by the stage, with a drummer who looks like singer Nona Hendryx; or at the choir director, in shiny satin, and it begins to dawn on you: radically inclusive. Not just words. I met with Yvette Flunder in her of…
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…er, and now I am the fill-in. This is not as much fun as being the doting Nana, trust me. So far, it’s meant: six hours in the emergency room; being pushed out of my queen-size bed at night by a ten-month-old who insists on sleeping right in the middle; countless random commutes; and, sometimes, holding a baby for hours after I’ve come to my end of holding capacity. It doesn’t help that my second daughter is pushy about whether or not I should be…
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