Religion Dispatches
…known for attacks on Scientology, decided to send a message to the Catholic Church by shutting down the official Vatican website (still not responding as of this posting). What are the Church’s misdeeds, according to these code crusaders? They go back to the selling of indulgences in the 16th century. And more recently, of course, there’s the Church’s interference in Italy’s domestic politics. (Not just Italy, we’d have to say.) – The Eds. …
Read More…wants to make us slaves again. Sigh. Palin’s over the top proclamation was coded in one of her specialty word salads that few can translate. Since I have been called the Palin Whisperer by one of my Twitter followers, let me give you the short version: Obama wants to make white people slaves!!!! In case you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the transcript: PALIN: Well, what we can glean from this is an understanding of why we are all on the ro…
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…eal of trust exists between us. Just as we do not plagiarize, we honor the code of privacy and do not make public that which was meant to remain private. For me, that trust was broken in the midst of this passionate debate in a way that tells me we have crossed a line. Writing a Facebook wall comment in response to a May 3rd debate between Gordis and Peter Beinart at Columbia University, I referred to Rabbi Gordis as a “tribal fascist.” The tribal…
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…s dedicated to serving the needs of the sick and the poor, the new Vatican Code of Canon Law cloistered them all, imposing rigid rules that undercut their ministries. As the century moved on, however, relations between the Vatican and the sisters seemed to improve. In its effort to respond to the horrors of the twentieth century, the Vatican ordered the sisters to become better educated, to update their rules and habits, and to begin meeting toget…
Read More…54 had no legal ramifications: it was not a bill to change the state legal code, as was SB-1433. It also stipulated that the bill would not apply to in vitro fertilization. Well, if any legislators believed this would give them cover, they were mistaken. The pro-personhood folks made it known that a a representative would be bringing a procedural motion to force hearing on SB-1433. Oklahomans for Life sent this memo to house Republicans, stating t…
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…espond to God’s love by loving our neighbors. The same call is still heard today in the push to control guns. But the power of religion to shape social values and government legislation was already waning even at the height of the Progressive era. The Social Gospel movement back then, despite its undeniable influence, was generally an adjunct to successful progressive programs, not their spearhead (with the notable exceptions of alcohol prohibitio…
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…We had more political power after the Voting Rights Act in 1965 than we do today after Shelby. Unless we face the fact that America’s first two Reconstructions were undermined by the monied elites of plantation capitalism, we can’t even name the challenge we face today. In seeking a higher moral ground, we must break out of dead-end racialized framing. We must intentionally challenge the ahistorical and amoral tendencies that many public intellect…
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…alism is central to its ideology. Scott would also eliminate anything that promotes diversity in government and public life—a drastic, devastating way of enacting the rhetoric of “colorblindness” into what it actually means: ensuring white, Christian dominance in all matters cultural and political. Immigrants, Scott’s document claims, will only be allowed into the country if they “assimilate,” and they shouldn’t seek to “change” America, only to b…
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…asure and marks the subservience of man to divine (or human) authority. We today are Abraham’s heirs, and re-enactors, of countless acts of circumscription. Today, as 2500 years ago, our own bodies are the instruments of authority, power, and control. Religious and political institutions of authority, usually backed up by violence, inscribe themselves on our genitals, our hairstyles, the ways in which we express our sexuality. We learn how to obey…
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…ite families for about two and a half times national mediate income, or in today’s dollars, about $125,000. That’s a home price that was affordable with an FHA or VA mortgage to working class families, black or white. Many black families could have afforded those homes in the late 1940s and 1950s, but they were prohibited from purchasing them by FHA policy. Today, those homes sell for $500,000 or $600,000. We now have a law, the Fair Housing Act,…
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