Religion Dispatches
…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …
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…tivation and technology to move ahead. I would also constantly remind smug North Americans that while the aid they brought was significant, the money they spent on their trip to “experience” the poor could have fed a family of ten in this local community. I do not want to devalue the importance of these trips or the need to cultivate global solidarity. I also do not want to question the good intentions of the thousands of individuals whom I met ov…
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…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
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…, Emma Sommers Richards died at 87. Her ministry “marked a breakthrough in North American Mennonite’s understanding that the Holy Spirit calls both women and men to pastor ministry,”according to an essay collection celebrating Richards. She first took the pulpit of Lombard Mennonite Church, in the Chicago suburbs, on Easter morning,1970. Her husband, the pastor, had laryngitis. She was ordained by the Illinois Conference of the Mennonite Church US…
Read More…rs of deeds, magistrates, and their employees. As The Charlotte Observer reported, the conservative North Carolina Values Coalition, for instance, sent an email the weekend before last to the state’s registers of deeds, stating that they can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples based on their “First Amendment right not to violate their religious beliefs.” Tami Fitzgerald, director of the North Carolina Values Coalition, likewise t…
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…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
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…of the religious mind, many of the progressive Zionist rabbis said they support Israeli NGOs working to combat racism, racist incitement, religious intolerance, and human rights abuses. That includes support for progressive religious movements to create a “religious, social justice option for secular Israelis to not only celebrate their own Judaism but to fight racism and the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox on Israeli life,” said Rosove. In the end…
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…s there on Aug. 14, 2016, when, after years of the “War on Terror,” one of North America’s most important international airports seized up as panicked reports of “multiple active shooters”—later discredited as false—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the tarmac. The responding authorities found neither shooters nor evidence of any shots fired. The most like…
Read More…t matter if you plan to stay two days, you need six months left on the passport before expiry. I was stopped then and taken into a room, offered something to drink, while they flipped through and through my passport. I was so nervous I could hardly sit still, but then they said: well, you need to renew this. And the next day, I went to the US embassy and applied for a new one, the one I have now. Here’s a tip, the fastest way to get a passport is…
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…erence between legal permission and moral propriety. I would welcome the opportunity to sit with you so as to attempt to move your conscience to my conviction that we must humble ourselves before this sublime work. But for now I will not rest, I will not sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight, until I hear the end of this violation. And neither should you, for it is the abomination that brings desolation. The final reckoning will not register which…
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