Religion Dispatches
…ou suggest, the particular ethical-political question of water, partly because it’s not often thought of in ethical and political ways, and partly because I don’t think there’s an adequate realization of how critical this issue is. I think water will be the critical issue of the 21st century, even more so than oil. Why? Because there are substitutes for oil, even if they take a while to develop, and there is no substitute for water. The lack of aw…
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…that it should exclude medication abortion, a two-pill process that can be used up to 10 weeks of gestation and that requires no hospital space or PPE. There followed “a series of dizzying legal twists and turns” in which the ban was blocked, reinstated, then blocked again. On April 13, the conservative 5th Circuit Court ruled that medication abortion is permitted but continued the ban on elective surgical abortion. The Just Texas panel discussion…
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…The church must remain clear that pornography is not essentially wrong because it is addictive, but because of its titillating and deceptive message: it rips sexuality from its relational context and presents human beings not as creatures made in God’s image, but as sexual commodities, something to be bought and sold.” Johnson’s comment about Roe v. Wade curtailing the production of “able bodied workers” essential to a thriving economy suggests th…
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…ave a distant abortion connection. Stem cell lines derived from aborted fetuses were used in testing those vaccines. These realities prompted statements from both the Vatican and U.S. Catholic bishops on how Catholics and others could ethically access vaccines. Their framing of this issue could have a far-reaching impact on religious thinking about how caring for individuals facing health challenges and promoting the “common good” may take priorit…
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…d how churches are growing digitally in general. And it’s interesting, because churches have traditionally been slow on the uptake with social media and getting digital. Of course, outreach and evangelism is part of the church’s DNA, and that’s fine. And so you start to use social media for that, you’ve got live broadcasts on Facebook, and it gets started kind of slowly at first. But then, what we found that really scared me is that a lot of small…
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…] community that could potentially, and in the Branch Davidian case did, cause harm to children instead of saving them from harm.” The use of the term provokes specific reactions, and those reactions often include state violence against the people we claim to want to protect. All of this is important, because when I say the ~Negative48 group, based in Dallas, surrounding Michael Protzman, is a cult, I do so knowing full well the problematic baggag…
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…gian Eliezer Berkovitz put it even more succinctly: Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism. Behind these refutations was the bloody history of European Christian persecution of Jews. In a 1963 lecture to German theologians, Richard Rubinstein noted that “for almost 2000 years an honest Judeo-Christian encounter was all but impossible in Europe… Only in modern times has a begin…
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In a statement on Sunday, the UN World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, the pope advised drivers: “Dear brothers and sisters, I implore everyone—drivers, passengers and pedestrians—to listen carefully to the words of St. Paul in today’s Liturgy of the Word: ‘Let us be awake and sober. Our behavior on the road must be characterized by responsibility, attention and respect for others. May the Virgin Mary guide us securely along the road…
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…Schedule 1, which classifies them as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” In light of such classification, suggesting that psychedelics might have a religious use seems anathema. The past few times I’ve taught the course, however, I’ve noticed that students seem more receptive to the idea. I know that it’s an anecdotal observation, but it tracks with a growing interest in the potential medicinal and spiritual…
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…e many such evocative comparisons across the media, Obama joins others who use founding texts or identification with American hagiography to shove us from the sad realities of today toward ideals to which we aspire. Like the women of Seneca Falls whose addition of “and women” transformed the Declaration of Independence to the Declaration of Sentiments, Obama (and others) seek to use our history to express hope. In doing so, they re-authorize civil…
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