Religion Dispatches
…dle Exchange Programs; A Moral Imperative” panel, co-sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance and the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, featured five religious leaders who came to Washington to urge Congress to overturn the 20-year-old ban on the use of federal funding (both domestically and abroad) for needle exchange programs (NEPs). Initiated under the Reagan administration, the ban remained in place throughout the Clinton years (over the objecti…
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…ntinued Israeli settlement construction. In the aftermath of all this, the United States—Israel’s strongest ally—finds itself unsure of how to react to the Gaza war and to the post-Arab Spring Middle East generally. Cluelessness, Amplified by Power and Privilege It’d be hypocritical of me to venture how this’ll all shake out, but I believe I know why it’s so hard to tell. These events, and the asymmetric results of the Israel and Gaza war, are a…
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…undits and political scientists often see the public sphere as a set of competing interests focused on access to material resources. You vote for the candidate who will strengthen your hand and get you more of what you want. Those who take this approach too far are mystified when some voters seem to “vote against their interests,” preferring candidates who don’t actually agree with them—such as evangelicals who don’t seem particularly concerned th…
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…been safe because he would’ve been able to protect her. Everything in that policy points to blatant misogyny. This was originally a 20-page policy letter, and they were almost never that long. So it was obviously important to him. But it’s not the sort of sexism you might find in fundamentalist Christianity, in which women sometimes cannot take leadership roles. It’s more mainstream misogyny, wouldn’t you say? Yes, and in that respect, he was ahea…
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…anging from access to reproductive health care and LGBTQ rights to foreign policy (notably with regard to Israel and the Middle East). The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, like the Constitution and the First Amendment that followed, was aspirational. Which is to say that they hoped the principle would shape and inform our culture, politics, and law over time. It did, albeit unevenly and slowly. But the principle also allowed for ever greate…
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…this label by steering clear of talk about the values that underlie their policy proposals. And the branding of the Right as the party of “values,” with its sarcastic overtones, might perpetuate this bad habit. Talk about values is tainted by its association with narrow-mindedness. Still, the error might prove to be “the right mistake,” which is also the title of Walter Mosley’s new novel. He’s returned to his character, the ex-con Socrates Fortl…
Read More…Not because I don’t think he will say things that many prove useful to the United States as we address growing income equality, a disastrous immigration policy and the challenge of climate change, but because the forum is inappropriate. Even Pope John Paul II, who was a much more political pope than Francis, made most of his historic addresses in the United States at large, open-air masses and similar venues where his comments where clearly situat…
Read More…mocracy protests in Moscow in 2012. He has frequently supported government policy in sermons and on state-run television, positioning Russia in the role of spiritual defender in response to Western objections to Russian human rights policy: “We have been through an epoch of atheism, and we know what it is to live without God. We want to shout to the whole world, ‘Stop!’” His 2011 book, Freedom and Responsibility, posits a contemporary political la…
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…o is organize efforts to oppose the Church’s stated position or change its policy. It’s not exactly “live and let live,” but it’s a huge leap forward over some previous LDS leaders’ statements on same-sex marriage, such as when Pres. Boyd K. Packer warned in 2010 that “If we’re not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that will legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God…
Read More…ime.” “Advancing these ideas” thereby shapes America’s mission: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.” And, later on: “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for…
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