Religion Dispatches
…e who have critiqued my tone, it’s also about a woman’s voice being in the mix. Lord knows there aren’t women in the Vatican hierarchy who could provide a balance to the high male clericalism. I also doubt anyone is telling Christopher Hitchens to tone it down. Besides, it is important to remember that many other Catholics are hurt deeply by this. It’s hard to realize the place you looked to for spiritual solace and intellectual vigor, that taught…
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…e on the heels of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and McPherson’s early ministry included barnstorming public healings during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Some experts, though, aren’t convinced by the comparison. “He seems like an opportunist,” said Diane Winston, a religion and media professor at the University of Southern California, noting that while McPherson and Seymour were unknown preachers who ground their way to outsized cultural inf…
Read More…has finally made it to the top of the polls, topping squeaky-clean Mormon Mitt Romney. But not without bumps in the road: prominent Southern Baptist Richard Land has cautioned Newt to be very apologetic about his past. Still, repentance would suffice. What Republican voters and the party can’t stomach is the arrogance of a black man who won’t repent. Cain’s lack of repentance and consistent lying exposes the fact that he isn’t a real card carryin…
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…night dancing with, someone who I had spoken to just a week before on the phone, her laughter weakened but still familiar. When I thought about her ashes being scattered around Boston I felt a momentary panic. Where could I ever go to find her again? Last week, just in time for the Feast of All Soul’s Day, celebrated each year on November 2, the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a new Instruction regarding the…
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…ing like a dam breaking, or water coming from the sea in Tahiti, or a tsunami. There were missionaries in the Pacific who were confused because the native flood stories did not say anything about “rain” as the Bible described Noah’s flood. Their floods came from the sea in giant waves. In Africa, flood myths are somewhat more scarce, because floods themselves are rare, and they can be life-giving events. The Chinese flood stories are more about co…
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…rking technology to “go viral” with their support for Proposition 8 and commit four hours each week to the ground and phone campaign. A primary source of Mormon messaging during the Proposition 8 campaign was the anonymously-authored “Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails” document, which went viral across Mormon social networks after its introduction by email in mid-August and was utilized as a training document and handout in the Mormon-coordinated g…
Read More…ders, and activists who are tempted after the Republican gains in the 2010 midterms to call for more compromise, civility, and government sensitivity to the plight of “the least of these”: Late in the year 2000, I stayed up late into the night watching election returns. The hope for a Gore presidency went down hard, like sparks struck from a flint. At 2:30 in the morning, the light came down to Florida. I went to bed, confident that we would have…
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…he tough son of a bitch, to clean up the mess.” In matters of character, family values and the heart, Gingrich has always been more douchebag than tough guy. As Max Blumenthal reports this week, in the late 1990s, after Gingrich political strategies failed dismally, he broke up with his second wife over the phone (just as he’d done with his first) as she lay immobilized in a hospital bed. Blumenthal devotes a good bit of his article on Newt’s conv…
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…and Concerned Women for America, as well as Congressional representatives Mike Pence and Michele Bachmann, two Tea Party favorites with presidential aspirations. Most iGovern participants are homeschooled, because the organization running the show is a civic education program for homeschoolers called Generation Joshua. GenJ (as it is fondly called by its more than 5,000 teenage members) is a division of the Home School Legal Defense Association (…
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…or how we’re doing it, then we run the risk of becoming automatons, of becoming mindless. I think we should be mindful. I think the Buddhists have a good point. If you don’t take those moments to look at what you’re doing, to step outside of those practices, to say, “What is this thing that I create?” then I don’t think you’re living fully into your religious life. I don’t think you’re giving it everything. Before returning to Christianity, you…
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