Religion Dispatches
…y a couple of days before his late-July press conference on the Rome-bound flight from Rio, Pope Francis urged thousands of young people gathered for World Youth Day to kick up some dust in their local churches. “We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder,” the pope said referring to the natural chaos of crowds, “but I want trouble in the dioceses . . . I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselv…
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…hildren inside a bathroom and told them to be quiet; the crew of a JetBlue flight took a card for one victim from Seattle all the way to Newtown to lay it in his coffin because his cousin had made it for him. As the coverage became less about piecing together the day’s events and more about the emotionally turbulent aftermath, the sense of public discomfort began to grow. Internet commenters chided writers for dwelling on the horrible and unnecess…
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…ded social resource scarcity for those most in need. What this large-scale flight of social resources left in its wake was not an urban demographic characterized by upward mobility but by severe poverty and social isolation. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of persons living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher grew from 7.8 to 15.8 percent for blacks and from 7.0 to 9.5 percent for Hispanics, and by 2010 the proportio…
Read More…hen put it and make the intentions. That means you have to know where your flight is going. As it happens my flight will enter Saudi Arabia from a non-Muslim majority country, France, so will land in Jeddah, the transitional port. However, since my next stop is Makkah, and Jeddah is closer to it than any of the five miqat, then technically I have to make my intention and take on the ihram before I leave the U.S. (or in France, or mid-air). Everybo…
Read More…making demands that are not required of heterosexual couples. Kyrgyzstan: United Nations Human Rights Officials Urge Against Anti-Gay Bill The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged the government of Kyrgyzstan not to adopt the anti-gay law that has moved through the parliament. The experts include the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom or opinion and expression, David Kay…
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…rriors.” The book is already in a second printing, so clearly there’s an appetite for understanding America’s slide toward fascism. But why are Germans so interested? “Germans have had a hard time understanding what’s going on in the US; most probably don’t know about the homegrown fascist movement, and, in a sense, how could they? We remember a United States that fought the Nazis,” she explains. Brockschmidt is careful about drawing comparisons b…
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…he Number One violator of religious freedom for five years in a row, as US policy evolved to support the country’s division into Sudan and South Sudan in 2010. But the law plays virtually no role in US policy toward Saudi Arabia, given that, for 15 years, the president has waived sanctions on the basis of US national security interests.) More recently, people generally mean that the US should engage “religious actors,” particularly groups on the g…
Read More…D members have remained frustrated not only with the refusal to change the policy, but the administration’s unwillingness to explain exactly how the policy is being implemented. Last year, at a townhall at the University of Maryland, Obama himself would not explain the policy, saying only, “I think that the balance we tried to strike is to say that if you have set up a nonprofit that is disassociated from your core religious functions and is out t…
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…be changing this. There is no question that a shift in Chinese government policy is necessary.* Given the failure of present policy, new strategies are called for. The Chinese administration, for example, should shift from the present top-down, hierarchical model of policy creation and implementation to a more local, representational and consensual model; from a reactionary model (that acts in response to crises that have already happened) to a p…
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…Hillel, a student-led movement that aims to change Hillel International’s policy of refusing to partner with or host organizations or speakers who, among other things, “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel.” Open Hillel calls that policy “counterproductive to creating real conversations about Israel on campus.” Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman of the Reconstructionist congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison, Wisconsin, and likewise…
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