Religion Dispatches
…Last night they announced plans for the i’itikaf or spiritual retreat (the last ten days of Ramadan) and told the brothers (only) not to bring their microwave, not to bring their toaster oven and not to bring their cell phone. It was almost funny. Following that announcement from the now infamous loud “speaker,” he said that fajr prayer would be at 5:40. I should have thought more clearly about this, but as it stands, I have three different prayer…
Read More
…with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the windows of Vatican…
Read More
…ed on March 9 with a front-page story in USA Today. For the last week, his phone ringing off the hook, Kosmin has become a lightning-rod for anxiety about the decline of American religiosity. “Whoever doesn’t win the election is going to complain about voting fraud,” he says with a chuckle. In its first two days online, the ARIS’ 26-page summary report [pdf], authored by Kosmin and his Trinity College colleague Ariela Keysar, scored 40,000 downloa…
Read More
…and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone. Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in respect to the political and cultural stances and demographic constituencies of the disting…
Read More
…tice abroad than at home, where expectations are high and conservative backlash looms. This is a common problem for progressive church officials who might find it easier, for example, to stand publicly for gay civil rights than to bring about similar justice within their own denominations. In this case, there is every indication that Bishop Carcaño remains a committed ally of LGBTIQ people both Methodist and otherwise. She will have many more oppo…
Read More
…d on Arafat in gratitude to Allah for having been her sister and for those last four years of her life which we shared so intimately like we never got a chance to before. By the time my sister was born I was already living away from my family for academic purposes and never really had a chance to bond as sisters until about five years. I am grateful for the gift of closeness that Allah gave us for her last days. My first year in California she spe…
Read More
…dy been rejected three times, despite an order from Mexico’s Supreme Court last June. More from the Washington Blade: A local judge officiated what the San Diego Union-Tribune described as the “impromptu wedding” of Victor Fernando Urias Amparo and Victor Manuel Aguirre Espinoza that took place outside Mexicali City Hall during an LGBT rights protest. Aguirre told the Washington Blade that Mexicali Mayor Jaime Díaz Ochoa’s assistant came up to him…
Read More
…l and an intense season of transparency, reflection and restoration.” Also last month, Auburn University hired Hugh Freeze as head coach of its football program. In 2017 the University of Mississippi forced Freeze to resign as head coach after discovering he’d been using his school-issued cell phone to call an escort service. Freeze was hired the following year by Liberty University, where he coached until he left for Auburn, just weeks after the…
Read More…holic Church, I’ve been having some interesting conversations by email and phone with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Some people have emailed me to say “right on.” Others, like some of my relatives, are just hurt, scared, and wondering if they can trust anything about their local priest, diocese, or bishop. I’ve received invitations to come and join the Episcopal Church (are you listening, Father Balmer?) but I am not quite “there” yet. Yet th…
Read More
…I write a weekly column and I get enormous mail and you can’t believe the number of mails I get from people living in little towns and there’s no church they can or want to go to so I am their church. I am the one point of contact outside of that community that makes them know they’re not crazy, because everybody else thinks they must be a Communist if they don’t go to church. I get letters from people who say they after they read one of my earli…
Read More