Religion Dispatches
…ames to the curriculum, but it also downplays the struggles that countless Americans have made against oppression. McLeroy said his goals have always been: Students should learn about “divine providence” and “In God We Trust”; children should understand the Constitution; they must understand that the United States is a “Constitutional republic”; and they must be taught the principles on which this country was founded, including “American exception…
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…ants in Iraq, but in most cases I didn’t tell how difficult it was to make contact with these activists, and how in some cases it took days or weeks to locate them, get them to agree to talk, and set up their interviews with me. Sometimes just finding their location could be a nightmare—like the time my taxi got lost in Gaza on my way to interviewing Hamas leaders and I had to go to the Islamic University to find the movement’s supporters who coul…
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…emains to be seen. But what cannot be ignored is that when you are tolerant of some kinds of extreme hatred, it opens the door for other less socially acceptable forms of hatred. It sets the Church up to be a mouthpiece of white supremacy and extreme nationalism. It is obvious why American Orthodox Christians want to minimize the problem as much as possible. It touches too closes to so many self-inflicted wounds. But if something is not done, ther…
Read More…fessor Sullivan’s objection to the notion of religious freedom? Addressing American liberals and the dissenters on the Court, she writes: You cannot both celebrate religious freedom and deny it to those whose religion you don’t like. Human history supports the idea that religion, small “r” religion, is a nearly ubiquitous and perhaps necessary part of human culture. Big “R” Religion, on the other hand, the Religion that is protected in constitutio…
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…oad of people, so these are the steps: Once I was in touch with our Jeddah contact person, I was taken to the cafeteria area to join our “group”. Then I was given a meal with half a pound of rice and half a chicken. (try to keep count how many times food offerings will be made this evening, okay?). From that point forward, my brain or my wits were no longer on demand. So I let somebody else took care of everything, in their own way, but hey, it’s…
Read More…ocal human rights lawyer, police representative and doctor. The public can contact the group directly or on a dedicated hotline to seek assistance. The group has several paralegals in Accra and others in cities across the country. “We are not making it about LGBT rights, we want it to be human rights … These are our rights, and as every other human being in Ghana we also have our rights,” Abu says. Crimea: European Parliament condemns human rights…
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…t online with friends and family in Tibet, serving as “important points of contact for sharing and disseminating information and for mobilizing the international community,” says Stephanie Bridgen, director of Free Tibet. “What I think is really exciting at the moment is that lots of young Tibetans are discussing and debating different aspects of how we should respond to the situation in Tibet.” Tsetam, for instance, feels torn between supporting…
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…story of violence. They win when they can keep religious people, and white American Christians in particular, blinded to the reality of their racism-poisoned chalice. But getting history right is just part of the struggle toward a different way, and in some ways it’s the easy part. The harder part is learning to surrender the violence within in order to begin to build a culture of nonviolence without. I will speak personally here, because when I l…
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…was asking myself, “Wait a minute—when did they get separated?” I think we Americans mostly think about the American Revolution and the French Revolution when we set up a secular government. But there were people in the ancient world that tried to create a secular relationship to government where nobody else did—and those people were Jews. Because the government of the nations that conquered them—Egypt and Babylonia and Syria and the Hellenistic E…
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…en and make it a normative legal principle that casual non-sexual physical contact between men and women is permitted, saying to the men, “The Talmud says: It’s your problem, Sir; not theirs.” To instantiate your reading of the Talmud would require you to act decisively to abolish all the legal mandates that objectify women’s bodies and put the onus on the men to take full control of their libido and desire. The ultra-Orthodox in Beit Shemesh sure…
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