Religion Dispatches
…ng the wheels for the project in motion with calls and e-mails to national service organizations. The committee is reaching out to organizations of all sizes and ideologies, including faith-based groups, unions and businesses as well as political groups—from Moveon.org on the left to Focus on the Family on the right—to motivate their members to participate. I understand now. What Obama is doing is exactly what George W. Bush and others like him wo…
Read More…athy for women’s issues. But Romney’s outlook did mature over his years of service, according to the Post, and he may have assisted Boston-area Mormon feminists by deflecting Church headquarters’ inquiries into their activities. On Tuesday, Salon.com’s Justin Elliot selected the most unflattering elements of Romney’s career as bishop to depict the GOP presidential candidate as “an enforcer of the most socially conservative policies of the LDS chur…
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…ortion drug, but the abortion drug is promoted by the United States Postal Service that is under federal jurisdiction. That is why the federal government needs to get involved. It wouldn’t be the last mention of the Postal Service, a hint towards the desire to ban abortion via an obscure 19th century law (see the next section). It’s doubtful whether this presentation of anger and disappointment was genuine—or merely part of a public strategy which…
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…helping out at that church. It was an attempt to discern how I might be of service and whether or not marrying my experiences and talents as a musician with my life of faith was something that was connected to that calling. I feel like I was called to a deeper awareness of God and that calling also was directly connected to an experience of service to an immediate moment of reaching out in kindness and compassion to someone and then a deeper aware…
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…a variety of innovative approaches to collaboration between mental health service providers and faith-based organizations from around the state; demonstrating how spirituality can be incorporated into mental health services in a way that is client-driven and respects the separation of church and state; and sharing information from research findings on the role of spirituality in trauma recovery and mental health. We’ve worked hard to make the con…
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…th the right hand over the heart. After an item has been blessed in divine service – palm leaves, linens used to dress or to wipe up at the altar, a metal chalice – and has reached the end of its useful service, the preferred method of its disposal is consumption by fire. Palm leaves are often turned to ashes for use the following year on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian holy season of Lent. Chalices may be melted down and recast. We…
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…s’ collapse, I called for the great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” to open the service. Much consternation and rebuke from some congregational insiders following the service: Did I not know that Martin Luther, author of “Ein Feste Burg,” was an anti-Semite? Another instance. When I came to California and to my current position, I was asked immediately by the ACLU to join in an effort to have a tiny, almost invisible, cross expunged from the seal of th…
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…s. Cardinal Dolan is scheduled to preside at Saint Patrick’s Holy Thursday service this week. The feet of undocumented immigrants are battered by their flights from violence, poverty, and war. Right now, they are also ready to run from the possibility of deportation and the possibility of yet another separation from their families. Whose feet will Cardinal Dolan, so willing to pray over President Trump, choose to wash? When Jesus washed the feet o…
Read More…pe. I wanted to stay in and help. So you prepared for a lifetime of Church service, starting as most young men do with two years of missionary service. You had a plan to work and pay for your mission. You started your paperwork. You met with your bishop. And when you did, you brought up gay marriage. Why? I brought it up because I was afraid of being sent out on a mission and the issue of gay marriage coming up and not being able to preach that it…
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…e Act (DOMA) and a move by the DHHS to disqualify the USCCB from a refugee services contract (because it refused to provide the full range of sexual health services to women who had been victims of trafficking) the bishops charged the administration with waging an unprecedented war to “neuter religion” in the public square and declared that they would be forced to mobilize to fight. The fact is, however, that Catholic bishops have been waging a ne…
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