Religion Dispatches
…h of Satan, headed by Magus Peter H. Gilmore, for being more interested in promoting their brand then in challenging the status quo. In early January the Temple released sketches of their statue. Peter Gilmore poo-pooed the design, saying it smacked of pedophilia. On Fox Business News, producer Bernard McGuirk suggested that Satanists should be lined in front of their statue and shot. Lawyers from the Satanic Temple demanded an apology. FEBRUARY I…
Read More…th case that brought us RFRA to begin with. The Satanic Temple’s print-and-sign web form for claiming a religious exemption to get out of having to listen to state-required biased counseling laws before obtaining an abortion. If only it were that easy. The member of a Mormon sect who claimed it would be against his religious beliefs to provide any factual information about the structure or hierarchy of his church to government officials investigat…
Read More…think it’s funny. “It really is just not funny at all,” said a Catholic monsignor in Indianapolis, after two drunk 26-year-olds were arrested heisting a nativity at his church. “What can you say? Just, simply no things are sacred any more.” It’s arguable, though, that it’s that hint of sacrilege that makes it funny. In Fargo, where the thieves have not been caught, the crime was credited to “delinquents who surely have a rich sense of irony.” Stea…
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…Weick searches through the flotsam of our postmodern consumerist world for signs of his presence. It is comforting, even pleasurable, to find signs. We love realizing there is an arrow hidden in the FedEx logo, or that the eastern coast of South America fits snugly into the western coast of Africa. We want to know there is order, even if that order is malevolent. Satan, New World Order, Illuminati—any order is better than none. This is why, at the…
Read More…licy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differing political orders. This realization has led us to pose a number of crucial questions to those engaged in the promotion of religious freedom as a stable and singular human right. These questions, explored in detail in the PoRF volume…
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…lso came and had champagne with me. The bond was not broken. That’s a good sign of maturity in the culture. You have a lot of historical information and theological background in this book that religion students would already know. So was this for a more mainstream audience? I wrote it because I was annoyed with some writers because I knew they knew better. I said, “There’s bad faith here.” These people are supplying the data but they go along wit…
Read More…sensus of the synod. Progressive Catholics, however, see it as a win and a sign of progress that there was even open discussion about these issues allowed at the synod. Most encouraging, says Andrew Sullivan, is the new level of transparency under Pope Francis and his decision to include the failed paragraphs and their vote tallies in the final document: And there you see why it is not wishful thinking to believe that something profound has indeed…
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…um identifies the mark: Cain is to carry inscribed on his face the holiest sign of all, the “great and honorable name of the LORD.” ______________ *Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the more commonly spoken vernacular after the Babylonian Exile, and scholars think that the practice of creating Targum—the Aramaic word for translation—began soon after, with new versions and additions continuing to appear for centuries. In the synagogue, scriptural read…
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…ated his unpopular stint in San Francisco. The smart money is on him being promoted and relocated, as happened with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and other clerics who have contributed so actively to the rapid exodus of members from Catholic parishes. At some point, these sorts of executive employees become too expensive to maintain. It becomes cost effective to put a golden parachute on their mitres and wish them well. The obviously forced resign…
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…cemakers. So rather than donning cut-off jeans and angrily pumping a peace sign while marching in the streets, he quietly modeled compassion as the antidote to violence, This does not mean he rolled over in a namby-pamby way, as the folk singer Pete Seeger once described him. Rogers might have sounded and looked wimpy, but he was fiercely dedicated to a pacifism rooted in human dignity for all. The strength of this conviction led him to create a p…
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