Religion Dispatches
…merged as the eventual nominee, although both eventual nominees played lip service to evangelical concerns. This cycle, as I wrote on several occasions last year, Donald Trump has scrambled the formula for winning over evangelical voters. Rather than pandering to evangelical voters with talk of “biblical values,” opposition to abortion, or promises to fight for “religious liberty,” Trump has played his own game. While evangelical “leaders” demand…
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…custody seizure in American history, when Texas law enforcement and social service workers removed more than 400 children from the Yearning for Zion ranch in El Dorado, Texas. Comparisons between Mormons and Muslims usually trade on damaging stereotypical portrayals of both groups and have led to violence against religious minorities. #VanillaISIS is hilarious, but arguably not productive if we’re invested in American religious liberty. #WhiteTear…
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…an Right groups to seek religious exemptions for businesses from providing services such as cakes and flowers for same-sex weddings. For example, the conservative Christian Legal Society encouraged and assisted a number of conservative evangelical and Catholic colleges to seek exemption from title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits sex discrimination. About two dozen schools have been granted such exemptions by the civil rights office of…
Read More…t LGBTQ people need opened to them. Mercy is an act of love, compassion or service given to those who sin or are afflicted in some way. LGBTQ people, same-sex relationships, and transgender persons are not sins or afflictions. Some Catholics have tried to convince me that the doors of mercy have a connecting corridor to the doors of justice. “A change in tone can eventually effect a change in teaching,” I’ve heard more than once (usually from folk…
Read More…o-Clinton project Correct the Record, recently wrote for the Religion News Service about his admiration for Clinton’s faith and how he has “loved every second of getting to know this woman with such strong Midwest, Methodist sensibilities.” Faith Voters for Hillary tweets quotes from Clinton that promote this view of her faith. Quoting her remarks at a 2007 forum on faith for Democratic presidential candidates, the group highlighted that she prays…
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…him when Groupon offered a deal. There, she was invited to a local New Age service, a mix of meditation and discussion centered on the Puranas and Vedas of Hinduism. “And I was so nervous, like, will I be the only white girl there? But I went and was so surprised, there were people from all over. Lord Krishna’s plan includes everyone, even people caught in the middle like me. And I’m fine existing in that gray area, I’m happy.” We finally get to h…
Read More…t out is what you will get back. So, the golden rule may still receive lip service, but it is too expensive to practice, according to the rich nations of the world. What about reparations or repentance? Karmic thinking alerts us that it is too expensive not to practice repentance and repair. Everything is connected COP21 is a success. It was more than we could have expected—and the Pope’s moral frame prevailed. The moral issue is the connection be…
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…hat one person is the son of God in the eyes of many. The life of love and service that Christ embodied—a life that Christians in Baltimore and beyond seek to emulate—seems to coordinate with the social justice messages of BLM. Yet there hasn’t been a party line when it comes to black churches lending support to this movement for black liberation. As Rev. Osagyefo Sekou has noted here on RD, this has led to discord between activists and black chur…
Read More…le with Catholic values.” And what could members of the 100-year-old girls service organization be doing that has so alarmed Carlson? Are Brownies dissing Jesus by making Christmas trees out of old Reader’s Digests? Is someone taking that Campfire badge a little too seriously (I swear it was an accident—and my sister’s eyebrows did grow back)? No, what has Carlson concerned isn’t anything specific Girl Scouts or Girl Scout troops in St. Louis are…
Read More…d by televangelist Pat Robertson. From Rosie Scammell at the Religion News Service: While the Vatican and the Italian hierarchy opposed the bill, the removal of a “stepchild adoption” clause was seen as a significant triumph for the Catholic Church. The measure was set to allow a person to adopt their partner’s biological child, which conservatives argued was a threat to the “traditional” family model. Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, h…
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