Religion Dispatches
…otection the EU gives us,” she said. “We now risk losing that protection. The government must promise that there will be no rollback on LGBT rights after Brexit.” Japan: Local officials form pro-LGBT equality league Several dozen local officials launched a new group to advocate for LGBT human rights….
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…s Smith’s belief in the importance of the doctrine, as well as the growing number of people initiated into the order. And though the prophet tried to stop the rumors from spreading, an increasing number of prominent figures outraged by the alleged practice were dedicated to root out the truth. Among those trying to expose the practice and its participants were Joseph’s brother, Hyrum, as well as his wife, Emma. Then, in May of 1843, in a radical r…
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…zes us with its eyes while we continue destroying our common livelihood. A Site of Pilgrimage Already While a poster onsite says “no pilgrims,” it refers only to the Puritan settlers of history. In fact, the Oceti Sakowin camp receives many pilgrims each day. They come from indigenous nations around the world, and there are many instances of sharing of food and resources. When I was there for the second time, for a few days this week, donations of…
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…racial identities. Rev. Barber noted that he’s White, Tuscarora (a Native American tribe) and African American, and has had to “recover from some deep hatred” from the time the Klan burned a cross in front of the home of his uncle—who provided him with a shotgun in case they came in through the back door. Nosie added that it’s vital to stay on “the spiritual path” to avoid becoming like what we oppose, but he warned that it won’t be easy. “By fig…
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…onstitution.” Based on the “explanatory memorandum” document identifying a number of American Muslim organizations as allies in its author’s aspirations, prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial publicly labeled over 200 American Muslim organizations “unindicted co-conspirators,” a highly controversial move derided at the time by legal experts as contrary to Justice Department policy and in violation of the groups’ constitutional rights. Even…
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…emism, is just a partisan stance). This is doubly dangerous ground. First, American history has so spectacularly clashed with American ideals (see: slavery). Second, by dismissing Acosta’s reading of Lady Liberty as partisan, Miller switches the register of language used, from that of religious discourse—in which the statue has an eternal meaning, “has always” meant this, Acosta pleads, citing “what the country has always thought of”) to a drily h…
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…ippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (MFIRE); listed on FAIR’s Web site as a “local group,” one promoting an Arizona-style immigration law in Mississippi. According to a 2010 report by the SPLC, “FIRE took the lead last year in coordinating the activities of the often fractious nativist extremist movement,” including launching “The Patriot Coalition, an anti-government outfit battling ‘globalism,’ ‘socialism,’ and the ‘loss of Na…
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…rily a story of how religion has interacted with some of the big events of American history. American religious expression—its music and art, its stories of internal spiritual quests, its embodiment, its wild profusion of utopian groups, its history of ritual practices—will have to be found elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God knows, while Glenn Beck rants in Twitter-like aphorisms condensing David Barton’s execrable version o…
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…munications technology and easy air travel. Islamist military tactics (Web sites as command centers, commercial airplanes as weapons) developed not simply from Hollywood movies, as was so often claimed following the 2001 attacks, but from the experience that constitutes the Muslim sacred community. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is therefore at least partly right in insisting that spiritual and not merely material forces are at play. There is no use fault…
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…s in Serbia, and US bombers tried to obliterate Baghdad—and therefore armchair American moralists are in no position to criticize Israel from the comfort of their suburban homes—it is hard to come up with a persuasive response. If pro-Israel doves object to almost anything Al Jazeera decides to transform into yet another symbol of Zionist bestiality, eventually we will hear evidence that Palestinian propagandists and their media allies have distor…
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