Religion Dispatches
…g days at work. On Wednesday and Thursday he saw more than twice the usual number of patients at his abortion clinic, Aid For Women, in Kansas City, Kansas. But then, this has been an unusual few weeks. Since mid-June, Dr. Yeomans (and the other abortion providers in Kansas) have found themselves scrambling to see as many patients as possible before today; as of July 1, these facilities will not be able to offer abortion services until they show…
Read More…used to receive threats but in recent years they had grown to an enormous number. My public activities resulted in promises to hunt me down, beat me up, and kill me. Neo-Nazis, homophobes and pro-Putin agitators showered me with insults on social networks, harassed me on the phone and at events, and even complained to my place of work. On 24 August 2014, Ukrainian Independence Day, myself and some friends who were in a picket on Malaya Sadovaya s…
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…less it’s real. The problems are not just administrative: Ahmadis have a “glass ceiling” in the civil service, and discriminatory use of voter registration lists (Ahmadis are enrolled separately) keeps them from participation in elected government, even in areas where they are the overwhelming majority. From there it spreads through society in ways both perverse and corrupt, according to Ahmad: a non-Ahmadi colonel’s career is ended because his st…
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…dict XVI apparently agrees, (as noted in these pages by Elizabeth Drescher last month) and has stated recently, “I would like then to invite Christians, confidently and with an informed and responsible creativity, to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible.” As if Zuckerberg’s kudos from Time weren’t enough, one of the year’s top films made him a hero (of sorts). David Fincher’s The Social Network tells a creation…
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…ect of both personal and corporate prayer. When he speaks to his mother by phone from Libya, she asks if he has felt the prayers coming from his home as well. He tells her that he has felt them and reports, “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat.” This is precisely the kind of hope that prayer can inspire that should become central to the understanding of it for those of us who do not engage in prayer. Though the old aph…
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…lace each March, complete with cute little bags where you can put your cellphone and stop looking at it for awhile. There’s a clear Jewish inspiration (unplugging day goes from Friday evening to Saturday evening, just like Shabbat), but there’s no overtly religious content, and the organization is explicit about wanting to reach people of all backgrounds. When I spoke with Reboot communications manager Tanya Schevitz earlier this year, she said th…
Read More…top the shift toward equality. This week, on his official blog, he wrote: “Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America—not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family…
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…, terribly unique, but there are universals. In a super white, super loud flash… or a DJ’s croon… or a telephone’s brrng brrng, when you become forever lonesome. Because you know the real secret. Anything can happen. Aliens could land. *** Among the outrages of living in a time of violence is that victims feel the need to rank their suffering. “What I suffered pales in comparison,” the Aurora victim who tramped over his dead girlfriend, who still…
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…part of the Star Trek universe (the introductory international relations class at my college, in fact, was full of Star Trek references.) There were multitudes of races and cultures and alliances; to get by, the good guys had to learn how to deal with them, sometimes violently, but usually peacefully. The central challenge of that universe, since our heroes were representatives of a federation of many planets, was getting along. Star Trek was abo…
Read More…es’ case, fresh off his stint burning a Qu’ran, the Florida pastor decided last week to ride the wave of ill-gotten publicity by going to Dearborn, Michigan to protest outside the Islamic Center for America. But following a hearing Friday in Wayne County, Jones was arrested and put in jail for refusing to post a $1 “peace bond.” The judge issued the bond requirement to keep Jones from inciting a riot, I guess, by outraged Muslims. What’s most dist…
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