Religion Dispatches
…Christians is not reason enough for a divorce and, more often than not, is code for “serious sin.” Pentecostals have a history of being strict about reasons to divorce, adultery being scripturally the only reason to do so. For those who divorce and who have a denominational affiliation through ministerial license, a divorce can mean, at best, additional scrutiny and at worst, stripping of ministerial credentials. Of course, that never has stopped…
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…i, who manipulates the ball like a marionette to puppet; but you cannot be free of the ego of coach, villain, and Saint, Diego Maradona, pacing the sideline, looking for an opportunity to abscond with the limelight. The glaring example for this year’s tournament comes in the form of a stadium. Stadiums, like cathedrals, intensify the experience. No one steps into that atmosphere without having a spiritual chord struck. Samba drums inspire dance; t…
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…nts like #SayHerName and social media trends like #BlackGirlMagic and #CarefreeBlackGirl? I think it’s just timing in some ways. The best way to talk about it is in terms of the reception we held. The reception was on July 7th—just after two very tragic killings of black men and subsequent killings of police officers. When the reception happened that same week, more than 1500 people showed up and that was really phenomenal. People were looking for…
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…f-evident than they once were. Although in Canada and the U.S. we have the freedom to choose what to believe in, it’s not always clear what we should believe in. Granted, not all experience the West as disenchanted, but experiences of suffering and despair (addiction being one of many) can make a person sense acutely that they lack meaning in their life. AA members often say that they came to the program to stop drinking, but that they stayed to g…
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…nterviewer, “Gays must have legal protections in terms of their rights and freedoms.” But in 2004 the government removed language protecting LGBTI people from a draft penal code, with the justice minister at the time saying it was “unnecessary to add sexual orientation because gender already covers it.” The timeline tracks anti-LGBT statements from columnists and party officials, including one made in 2010 by Aliye Kavaf, “the then state minister…
Read More…to “shari’ah law,” and did we need a party like Geert Wilders’ nationalist Freedom Party in the Netherlands? In his answer, McCarthy said he was an admirer of the incendiary, far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Wilders, who has likened the Qur’an to Mein Kampf. Although Wilders’ Freedom Party had one goal of banning the burqa, McCarthy nonetheless suggested that the U.S. should be be “like France” and ban the burqa. Instead, he maintained, th…
Read More…n contravened fundamental liberties, including personal liberty, equality, freedom of movement and freedom of expression. The three-judge panel of Malaysia’s second-highest court led by Justice Datuk Mohd Hishamudin Yunus and comprising Datuk Aziah Ali and Datuk Lim Yee Lan had also said the law was discriminatory as it failed to recognise men diagnosed with gender identity disorder. The Negri Sembilan government had appealed that decision along w…
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…rality on religious matters, whereas others view it as secretly hostile to free religious expression. To be fair, it should be confessed that secularism has often been a profoundly anti-religious idea. It certainly was in the rabidly anti-clerical French Revolution. And we see to this day very different models of secularism in the United States and France. In France, secularism means that you cannot wear religious garb to public school; in the Uni…
Read More…icrobe cells, mutated cells. We are built, too, of our parents, of genetic code and flesh and blood and bones that grow inside of flesh and blood and bones. So we come again to the parents: “There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer,” Hazel tells us. Green, who is now the parent of two children, told The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, that his own…
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…, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana became the first governor to sign an “academic freedom” bill into law. Observers on both sides of the issue are now waiting for the first school district in the state to adopt a curriculum based on this new language. Of course, these academic freedom bills, along with the “teach the strengths and weaknesses” wording in Texas are merely a watered-down version of intelligent design—what Judge John E. Jones III, in his rul…
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