Religion Dispatches
…ng religious intolerance in places like Central America, China, the Middle East, and Russia,” said Human Rights First’s Robyn Lieberman. ”We call on the faith leaders to voice their expectation for a world in which religious practice is free and safe, and we call on the Americans in particular to affirm their support for an improved U.S. asylum system that protects those who must flee religious and other persecution.” The organization also note…
Read More…equivalent to “Islamic fundamentalism” and compared both to “apocalyptic beasts.” Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, a top official in the Roman Curia, also said that divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage in the West, and Islamic fundamentalism in Africa and elsewhere, both had a “demonic origin” that the synod had to combat. “What Nazi-fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanatici…
Read More…the Northwest, Grain Belt in Minnesota, the Sam Adams patriots in the Northeast! Dems are leaving an awful lot of support on the table simply because they’re not willing to chug swill like Scott Walker on a Miller bender. What’s that you say? You say a beer caucus is a terrible idea? You say talking incessantly about alcohol would turn off many non-drinkers? You say plenty of Democratic politicians have been known to knock back a cold one, even th…
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…nism. Kasich supports balancing the budget and lowering corporate taxes to promote growth and to encourage companies to bring profits earned overseas back to the U.S. But he also supports training those at the bottom for meaningful work. He wants secure border controls but also a legal means for law-abiding undocumented immigrants to pay a penalty, stay here, and work. To back up this policy, he cites Ronald Reagan, the most popular Republican pre…
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…heocrats are increasingly looking to Russia and other authoritarian former East Bloc nations as models for the United States. These countries tend to be homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic. They’re often run by quasi-dictators who are highly nationalist and argue that the primary duty of women is to produce children for the fatherland. These nations usually promote traditional gender roles and often integrate ultra-conservative forms of orthod…
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…rried priests serving under the jurisdiction of Rome. Byzantine Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians who have entered into communion with Rome, maintain the Eastern Orthodox practice around clerical celibacy, allowing married men to be ordained to the diaconate and priesthood, though not the episcopacy (i.e. bishop). The Catholic Church also allows married clergymen who convert to Catholicism to, on a case-by-case basis, be ordained into the Cat…
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…ly undermining justice, supporting the destruction of the planet, and even promoting violence. Rooted in the values of religious freedom, pluralism and separation of church and state, it’s led by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and Union Theological Seminary’s Kairos Center, which jointly sponsored the conference. Nosie, who now leads Apache Stronghold, an organization that seeks to “battle continued colonization, def…
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…t even as he’s deepened pre-existing US military involvement in the Middle East. Biden, by contrast, was not only a key ally to the Bush administration in selling the Iraq War—something he continues to lie about when challenged—he’s supported military action in countries as far afield as the former Yugoslavia and Sudan, and was part of the administration that fought the disastrous war in Libya. A social conservative for much of his career, Biden’s…
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…igious beliefs, we find it offensive that people want government to either promote or attack the religious beliefs of any Americans.” This effort is partly in answer to bowdlerized Religious Freedom Day resolutions promoted by Project Blitz in state legislatures. These tend to be more acts of religious boosterism than commemorations of the legislative overthrow of the Anglican Church in Virginia or the advance of religious equality under the law….
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…a on the foundation of this problematic apocalyptic narrative about Middle Eastern geopolitics. There can be little doubt that the show’s producers, Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, were aware of this, as they call themselves “Hollywood’s noisiest Christians.” They have produced Christian shows, like The Bible and A.D. The Bible Continues, and are raising millions of dollars to start a conservative Christian network through MGM. As the producer of Th…
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