Religion Dispatches
…ions spearheading up the drive to pass Proposition 8 in California—the anti-same-sex marriage initiative—has issued its 2008 Voter guide. Not too extensive in its coverage, the “Voter Issue Guide” for the 2008 Presidential Race is divided into three sections: “Homosexuality”; “Sanctity of Life”; and “Other Key Issues.” Each area contains five points. Homosexuality: Federal Protection of Traditional Marriage—Limiting marriage to the union of one ma…
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…hoice organizers, where pro-choice senators are outnumbered by a ratio of 2-to-1. “It’s the strategy they disagree about, it’s not the goal,” she notes. “This is really… an indicator that in the last election, large anti-choice majorities were elected to the Ohio house and senate. People who want to outlaw abortion in our state have seen a real opportunity.” Gonidakis believes that Ohio has had a “banner year for the pro-life movement… we’re bless…
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…intermingling, structurally they were never one in the Sunni world. In the 18th century, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, first master of the Wahhabi tariqah (order), is arguably the precursor to the modern Muslim Reformation. By moving the power away from the scholarly class and breaking tradition, the standard division between political and religious authority is bridged. The Muslim Reformation has happened, and bin Laden is the standard bearer. Tho…
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…tual, verifiable political language. So for example, I have a strongly anti-war, anti-military leaning that anyone who knows me could quickly pin to my Mennonite upbringing. But if I were to enter into the public square…I would be expected to make an argument based on the very mixed and often counterproductive end results of violent military ‘solutions’ to social problems, as opposed to nonviolent resistance approaches to such problems. It is not…
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…r discrimination that the churches generated over several millennia. By the 1970s and 1980s, the scandal of Christian ignorance unto injustice on same-sex everything became too obvious to ignore. Exclusion of qualified candidates from ordination, the spread of theological pornography like “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” (From the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana 8), and insulting anti-queer preaching led cou…
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…Sodom: Religion, Homoerotic Desire, and the End of the World in England, c. 1550-1850 H. G. Cocks U. of Chicago Press March 2017 Also that the Sodom story has functioned as an origin myth of homoeroticism, of a city or polity given over to lust. In that respect the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah has played a key role in linking sexual excess, social breakdown and apocalyptic dreams of the world’s end. The story still retains enormous power…
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…al cardinals to elect a successor with priorities close to his own. Seventy-seven of the 121 cardinals currently eligible to vote in the next conclave were appointed by Benedict XVI and John Paul II, most of them as conservatively minded as their patrons. Of these 77 men, 25 will turn 80 in the next five years, rendering them ineligible to vote in a conclave and creating more vacancies for cardinals sympathetic to Pope Francis’s worldview. However…
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…r, beyond a few curious glances, did the they seem much to register the low-key grand finale of the set: a 45-minute rendition of his recently released anthem in support of the Occupy Movement, “We Are the Many,” sung after Makana went subliminal Superman, unbuttoning his dress shirt and opening his suit jacket to reveal a t-shirt reading “Occupy with Aloha.” Were Makana more of a belter (or, were anything more interesting to the world leaders tha…
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…at their presence “threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence.” Fascism, he means. Even as I am angered by the anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe that denies compassion to victims of war and violence, I do remain discomfited by the prospect of many Europeans, many with no prior experience of religious diversity, all but forced to accept huge numbers of refugees by governments already seen as aloof and unco…
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…I hope, students. I tried to write this in an accessible way, introducing key themes in religious studies alongside key themes in film studies. I find my home primarily in religious studies, and I’m sure that the book leans in that direction, but I’m pleased that a great film studies press has been interested in publishing it, a press that really has no other religious studies titles in its catalog. There is a wonderful, vibrant, even if still fl…
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