Religion Dispatches
…bly London we are going to try to go weekly in 2014, and we are adding the services that you get at church. Pastoral care will first come in the form of small groups, with more serious problems being passed on to relevant service providers. However, we want to take care of the whole person. Since launching the first Sunday Assembly in New York City () on June 30, 2013, this group experienced some growing pains with some the board of directors choo…
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…t want to go, but for my friend, I did. All I could think about during the service was who would wash Mark’s feet? Who would speak a word of repentance and healing for what had happened to Mark while he was a child, believing God with all of his heart, and believing the priest who was entrusted with his spiritual and temporal life? The Jesuit at the Thursday service did mention how awful the week had been, and how grateful he was that the congrega…
Read More…are keenly aware of. We’re human. But when you’re the publisher of a news service that is, as a recent fundraising email claims, “devoted to unbiased, nonsectarian coverage of religion,” and when your background is so thoroughly sectarian—including a role in the canonization of Saint “Mother” Teresa and a pastoral trip to Iraqi Kurdistan with Cardinal Timothy Dolan—it’s vitally important that you provide no reason for anyone to believe that you f…
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…ned a decree this week naming Dmitry Kiselyov a recipient of the “Order of Service to the Fatherland” for his contributions to Russia’s social and economic development, and “his services in the humanitarian sphere, strengthening the rule of law, protection of the rights and interests of citizens, and many years of diligent work.” Putin put Kiselyov in charge of a new government news agency created in December to tighten his control of the media. K…
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…. The mythic King is deployed as the ideal American and ideal Christian in service to blunting any attacks on either institution. Not only is the civil rights movement collapsed into the legacy of King and the SCLC, but it’s also often incorrectly idealized as a uniquely Christian enterprise. The secular and non-Christian individuals and groups who participated are either marginalized or erased from the popular narrative. King’s legacy has been ap…
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…s far beyond adolescence. Many Jews serve beyond their 3 years of required service, and many continue compulsory reserve duty until middle age. But I would suggest there’s an even deeper problem here. Deeper than the propaganda and the compulsory military service. The problem lies at the core of the idea of the Jewish state, which is that the state of Israel and its army, being a Jewish state and a Jewish army, are meant to protect Jews, to serve…
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…Methodist, Jewish problem. Some progress has been made; there is much lip service to women’s inclusion and equality, but much less correction of injustice. Privilege is hard to renounce, and male religious leaders—who are the overwhelming majority in the mainstream faith groups—still act like patriarchs. And with all due respect and affection to my brothers and friends in the progressive religious community, the men in that movement are not far a…
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…s beliefs,” according to Equality Texas. The bill applies to child-welfare services, employment, housing, marriage licensing, ceremonies, and services, health care (including gender-affirming clinical care, psychological, counseling, and fertility services). HB 2795 would allow county clerks and their deputies to abdicate their duty by declining to provide marriage licenses to all eligible applicants, if they have a “sincerely held religious belie…
Read More…ained after being lured to meet in the city by the police, who were posing online as gay or transgender people looking for dates, the activist added. Many of those affected lived in rented apartments, which their landlords told them to vacate after the raids, the activist said. Some fled for Turkey or went to hide in other regions of Azerbaijan. Eurasianet also reported on the “rising” persecution of LGBT people: Dozens of similar incidents have o…
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…verage from such likeminded sites as Conservative Grapevine, Catholic News Service, LifeSiteNews, LifeNews, Stop the ACLU, OneNewsNow and many more. The main donor to BornAliveTruth, a 527—an organization allowed to raise money from individuals in unlimited amounts—is Raymond Ruddy, who is described by Kuhnhein as “a prominent anti-abortion philanthropist in Massachusetts who supported Mitt Romney for president in the GOP primary.” ++++++++++ Focu…
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