Religion Dispatches
…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
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…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…
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…delphia Metro Area), and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) The Tier 2 Counties Florida: Miami-Dade, Pinellas (Tampa Bay area), and Duval (Jacksonville) Counties Ohio: Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) North Carolina: Wake (Raleigh) and Guilford (Greensboro) Counties Michigan: Macomb and Oakland Counties (Detroit Metro Area), and Kent County (Grand Rapids) In a 2022 Facebook Live video Carrie Sheffield, the director of AFPI’s Center for American Values offer…
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…anizations have made an active effort not merely to recruit members of the military, but also to have their members join the military and obtain combat training and experience. We know from FBI reports that they’ve had at least some success in doing this. Then there are paranoid, black-helicopter types from the Patriot movement who are recruiting from the military. For instance, there’s a group calling itself the “Oath Keepers” comprised of vetera…
Read More…slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were permitted. Despite 10,000 folding chairs, most of us would have no choice but to stand. Once in my appointed place behind the last row of seats, I found myself in a community of fellow pilgrims, lottery winners from local parishes, nearby colleges, an…
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…ualism is bad. Also, he notes but offers no explanation for the decreasing number of marriages in many countries. I am glad to see that in Section 34 he understands this basic fact of contemporary western culture: The ideal of marriage, marked by a commitment to exclusivity and stability, is swept aside whenever it proves inconvenient or tiresome. The fear of loneliness and the desire for stability and fidelity exist side by side with a growing fe…
Read More…y lowering standards, she added, “we have reduced the effectiveness of our military.” She continued, “You will cripple the defense of our country if you lower the standards at all.” O’Donnell further claimed that women have a special role in society, just not in military combat, citing the special role of mothers. “When you remove the role of the mother, the family is left to crumble,” she said, blaming even declining SAT scores on this alleged ph…
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…a war criminal. He volunteered to go to Afghanistan or to resign from the military. Instead he was prosecuted in military court, where he was not allowed to use his moral and legal assessment of Iraq as a defense. National Guard troops were ordered into a war they never expected to fight. Sherburne Baker, son of Celeste Zappala, joined the Pennsylvania National Guard to serve people in his community and protect people he loved. On April 24, 2004,…
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…riticism, not territorial expansion, was the key to Israel’s political and military survival: “Of course we are not wholly responsible for the worsening of our political-military situation,” he wrote, But self-criticism is essential if we are to overcome a tendency to self-righteousness, a tendency which results from Jewish approaches to history, from our historical experience, and from the ‘ethos’ of self-righteousness as promoted by Prime Minist…
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…Judeo-Christian values” and “American exceptionalism,” was fined by the US military in 2003 for his involvement in the use of “improper methods” to get information from an Iraqi detainee that military prosecutors said amounted to torture. West appeared on Gaffney’s radio program and said that he hoped Congress would focus on the “infiltration of the shari’ah practice into all of our operating systems in our country as well as across Western civili…
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