Religion Dispatches
…nts Reform Judaism; Muslims and other non-Christian groups arrive in large numbers. But this is primarily a story of how religion has interacted with some of the big events of American history. American religious expression—its music and art, its stories of internal spiritual quests, its embodiment, its wild profusion of utopian groups, its history of ritual practices—will have to be found elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God…
Read More…entified himself as a Christian of a distinct stripe by advocating burning phone books that advertise abortion and then said he doesn’t have a Qur’an but if he did he would “feed it page by page to (his) goat who would be impervious to its lies.” He then admitted he’d not read the Qur’an because he “doesn’t read fiction.” Another who insisted he didn’t “hate other religions or cultures” then argued that the “so-called Christians” (referring to the…
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…ion about his bank account, credit cards, home address and social security number—was illegally retrieved, and that he was subjected to surveillance and phone-tapping. The church, meanwhile, countered that Behar’s article was a slanderous, sensationalist attack on a legitimate religious organization and part of a much longer history of misunderstanding and persecution that this religious minority has faced since its inception. In keeping w…
Read More…percent of all deaths in 1985 to about a third as of 2006. And while solid numbers for Jewish cremation are lacking, anecdotal evidence suggests that the practice is firmly entrenched. A suburban Philadelphia cemetery owner estimates that cremations now total five percent of his business. The same percentage—this time applied to all of California’s Jewish funerals—is given by cremation advocate Rabbi Allen Maller of Culver City, California, whose…
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…. And so Thistlethwaite holds forth in “On Faith” but does not pick up the phone and call Peter. And Peter in turn rails against Wallis who in turn ignores everyone he does not think is more powerful than he (there I just did it; I was nasty). Thistlethwaite suggests that the differences are actually about strategy. Liberals demand complete agreement on all issues to work with others on one issue. Progressives want to reach out to moderates and ev…
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…me and rejection that comes when one of our own wanders or falls away. The phone calls stop, the texts cease, and the friendships end (scriptures such as Matthew 5:30; Matthew 18:15-17; and 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 are usually cited as reasons for “radical” acts of amputation). But how are we defining what is radical? Are we only radical when it comes to sexual sin? Are we radical in our love for the poor? Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testa…
Read More…e, it will lead to the killing of Christians in Africa. Speaking on an LBC phone in, Justin Welby said he had stood by a mass grave in Nigeria of 330 Christians who had been massacred by neighbours who had justified the atrocity by saying: “If we leave a Christian community here we will all be made to become homosexual and so we will kill all the Christians.” “I have stood by gravesides in Africa of a group of Christians who had been attacked beca…
Read More…racy, and one of Freshwater’s most active supporters, told me in a January phone interview, “That is not the arm of Zachary Dennis, or if it is, it was not a mark left by John Freshwater.” When asked to clarify, Daubenmire at first denied he was accusing the Dennis family of lying. Then he accused them of being in it for money. Then he wanted to know if I was a Christian. In short, Freshwater and his supporters have done everything but accept pers…
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…Johnson, a fundamentalist megachurch pastor who had one of the biggest megaphones in Ohio in 2004. With his 2,000-member Fairfield Christian Church, Johnson ridiculed the early participants of We Believe Ohio, joking that their combined congregations could fit into a phone booth. Along with Rev. Rod Parsley—the movement’s bombastic mouthpiece who called on Ohio Christians (who he called the largest “interest group” in the state) to “lock and load”…
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…e, in 2012, we won the first judgment in Oaxaca,” Méndez marveled during a phone interview last week. “In the two years [since], we have succeeded in covering almost the entire country. Even some LGBT rights supporters are a little mystified that marriage equality rulings haven’t sparked a national backlash. The fight over Mexico City’s 2009 marriage equality law brought strong opposition from the country’s Catholic hierarchy. Yet while some state…
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