Religion Dispatches
…en son. And for Christians, according to Paul, they are the spiritual progeny of Abraham and Sarah, and the Jews of Abraham and Hagar. Netanyahu then uses the term “ancestral land” to describe the location of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. But what are the borders of this “ancestral land”? According to the Bible and Jewish tradition it would certainly include the West Bank (Gaza is more complicated), the very land Palestinians are cla…
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…pecially common in Protestant America, where people don’t think they have any connection to objects at all. I get that a lot. I just had a Quaker ask me the other day, “Well, what about us Quakers? We don’t deal with objects and the senses.” And I was like, “Of course you do: you meet in a building, the entire place is constructed for you to have a specific experience, the way you sit, the way you face each other, the way you talk about going insi…
Read More…r. Martin Luther King Jr. about bending the arc of history toward justice? Can you even say “bend the arc” in Hebrew? Or Yiddish? I am a fan of this organization, whatever its name. They do great work, and they have the potential to do even more. I have no doubt that many consultants and stakeholders wrestled with all the issues I’ve spotted here, and many more, and that this reflects their sincere best efforts to balance multiple constituencies…
Read More…ks!” Look how your servants are beaten! You are unjust to your own people.’ He said, ‘You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, “Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.” Go now, and work; for no straw shall be given you, but you shall still deliver the same number of bricks.’ I’ll add some thoughts later on how to respond to the situation, but for right now, it’s enough to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Except this time…
Read More…iscriminatory refusal to grant legal status to an organization “violates Kenya’s international obligations.” Kenyans law criminalizes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature.” France: Anti-Gay National Front Wins Seats in Senate This week the far-right Front Nationale, led by Marine Le Pen, picked up its first two seats in the French Senate. The Party has aligned itself with the aggressive anti-marriage equality movement in France. Taiwan: ‘…
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…known as ijtihad), with prolific results. Islamic jurisprudence governs many matters that many Westerners would not consider ‘legal’ at all, from diet and etiquette to prayer, and it has incorporated many ways of accommodating change. One example is the Sunni view that a consensual interpretation of the shari’ah might allow for departures from previous understandings; another is the assumption that God’s rules have a goal (the maqasid al-shari’a…
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…Pole; under the Mediterranean near Crete; in Sweden, the Persian Gulf, and Egypt.” What Paradise Lust makes clear is that the rhetorical power of words like “Eden” far transcends the actuality of any one place. Go to top Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church Kaya Oakes Counterpoint 2012 Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church (2012) by Kaya Oakes – Few religious phenomena of the last decade have been…
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…Qur’an from the 8th century, and a visually striking red velvet tent from Egypt known as the Mahmal. While the portrayal of the history of Hajj balances the spiritual with the material challenges met by the organizers and pilgrims, the same cannot be said for the contemporary accounts of the Hajj. During the launch of the exhibition, Director Neil MacGreggor, speaking of the contemporary pilgrimage, noted flatly that the “Hajj is one of the great…
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…ly, there is no model for what “everyone” does in interfaith family life, any more than there is in any other religious life. While Christmas, in particular, carries a great deal of emotional weight—from joy to dread—for both Christians and Jews (as well as theological significance for practicing, rather than cultural, Christians), the challenges posed by Easter and Passover can represent both logistical and theological minefields for interfaith f…
Read More…. This important but modest bill embodies the Jewish principle that “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). The DREAM Act is opposed by religious right groups like Concerned Women for America and Eagle Forum, but Conservatives for Com…
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