Religion Dispatches
…r have to die in such a way? You approved of and condoned as unregulated a free-market as possible and have watched as our nation falls into economic collapse. You encouraged excessive greed and now millions are paying the price when it proved unsustainable. Millionaires and billionaires padded their pockets with money they had no use for while literally millions are on the brink of homelessness or are already homeless. You helped build America’s…
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…bath water to do their laundry and ration their consumption of vegetables. Between 2001 and 2007 the Japanese increased their per-capita consumer spending by two-tenths of one percent, or basically not at all. So here is the question of the day: Is it really a good idea, at a time when US consumers are already beginning to act in much the same way as those traumatized Japanese, for the White House to signal that we’d better start scrimping and sav…
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…es. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a big breakthrough for the pope to promote “responsible parenthood,” here’s Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the l…
Read More…of injustice, often seek to hide behind self-righteous indignation—often a code word for revenge. That different segments of the population, of those whose votes the candidates want, choose to be for the death penalty, cannot be—is not—a valid reason for the candidates to oppose the decision of the Supreme Court against the death penalty. Please, politicians –elected and seeking to be elected—reconsider your position. I humbly make my own the word…
Read More…terpretation will remember that John’s Revelation was written as a kind of code to an audience hard-pressed by persecution and loss. Few believe that its message was intended to be taken literally—much less as a roadmap to events two millennia in the future—but rather to provide comfort and reassurance to a struggling community. It is a bitter irony therefore to see it taken out of context and used to attack a politician offering a platform of hop…
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…of same-sex love, is a distant dream. This has created a society where gay freedoms — which can mean Grindr on one end, and the right to marriage on the other — are reduced to carnal pleasure. India, as a consequence, feels like a place where love and sex have parted ways, and where the arc of freedom is bending toward license. It is in this context that Mr. Johar’s equivocations acquire special meaning. He is not popular among activists and the i…
Read More…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
Read More…e made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. “If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion.” Here is the bill in its entirety: FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA: Section 1. Th…
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…ayer of my persuasion (we’ll call her Petra from Yuma) finds using the tax code to benefit such schools offensive to the First Amendment. In the past, Petra from Yuma could go into court to challenge the tax credit as a form of state-subsidized religion. But Petra (or a Thomas Jefferson redivivus, for that matter) is now out of luck. The core issue is whether providing the tax credit has the exact same practical impact as simply giving tax revenue…
Read More…acy to SBC traditionalism. If that’s what they want to teach, fine. It’s a free country, and there’s no reason to begrudge anyone their beliefs. But it’s simply horseshit to pretend that there wasn’t a historical process by which conservatives captured the reins of the denomination and have slowly but surely been purging even the mildest dissenting voices for the past 30 years. So let’s be clear: the conservative SBC ethics is only one among many…
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