Religion Dispatches
…legal will not have a significant effect on the number of abortions. The developments at Regent University and the University of Notre Dame suggest that younger evangelicals understand that, as do a growing number of Roman Catholics. The reflexive position that it is impossible to be both an evangelical and a Democrat or a Catholic and a Democrat no longer obtains. Something’s happening here….
Read More
…hdiocese’s efforts to cast Hernandez as a low-level volunteer, he’d held a number of positions of influence and authority in the church’s Hispanic outreach: as a member of the Archdiocese’s council for Hispanic Youth and Young Adults; as a keynote presenter at the fifth Hispanic Catechetical Congress of the Denver Archdiocese in 2007; and a participant in the elite Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, alongside Archbishop Chaput himself, and other high-…
Read More
…ven though many women feel marginalized, you still have conferences at the Vatican on women, or Women’s Day at the Vatican. You don’t have an LGBT Day at the Vatican. While Pope Francis has made great strides in what he’s said and even in his use of the word gay, we are so far from that still. It’s easy to say I want to have a Mass for women in the parish, or a women’s book group, and there are obviously still big questions that women have about t…
Read More…dicted that 30,000 people would participate in the service, but the actual number appeared to number around 2,000. “Our prayers will open the sky and the homosexuals will fall, we will be blessed with victory,” said Lee Young-hoon, head of the leading organization in the anti-LGBT coalition. Mexico: Supreme Court embraces marriage, Church and some political officials resist As we have been reporting, the marriage equality movement has been movemen…
Read More…ario, Jains run a number of large institutions with many employees, a high number of whom are not Jain. At some point, a number of people realize that the current system is a complicated and inefficient way to feed people, and so there are attempts at reforming the system. One of the questions that the would-be reformers have to consider is: What do most people, in fact, eat? That’s important, because they are trying to craft a system that takes i…
Read More
…homosexuality; he was reportedly thrown from a building and stoned. Spain: Valencia passes gender identity law The parliament of Valencia passed a gender identity law meant to guarantee self-determination and equal rights for transgender people. China: LGBT students face bullying, get little support, says a report At Sixth Tone, Fan Yiying wrote about the prevalence of bullying and lack of support for Chinese LGBT students at all levels, from prim…
Read More
…out The Family? Jeff Sharlet: The Family is the oldest and arguably most influential religious conservative organization in Washington, a “brotherhood” comprised mostly of politicians such as Senator Jim Inhofe, Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Jim DeMint, and, now infamously, Senator John Ensign, Governor Mark Sanford, and former congressman Chip Pickering, all of whom turned to The Family to help cover up sex scandals this past…
Read More…“But there is still strong opposing voices such as Christian groups. Their numbers aren’t big but their political influence is significant,” Wu said. While marriage is not yet an option, some are encouraged by recent developments in gay rights. Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan earlier this year became the first city to allow same-sex partners to be listed in household registration records. Italy: Court Rules Against Mayors Recognizing Gay Couples’ Mar…
Read More
…Armor of Light, which I reviewed here in October. Schenck, a deeply conservative evangelical with close ties to Republican lawmakers, has been waging a self-described “lonely” fight to sever evangelicals’ “unholy alliance” with the NRA. Thus far, as the film depicts, Schenck has made little headway with his evangelical friends. Bean’s recent paper for the New America Foundation on evangelicals and climate change may provide some clues about why f…
Read More…re in a moment. As for why the Obama administration and more-or-less conservative evangelical leaders might find common ground on the immigration issue, it’s simple math. Demographics explain why Democrats want immigration reform: Hispanics will drive minority growth above all. Their numbers will triple to 133 million by 2050 from 47 million today, while the number of non-Hispanic whites will remain essentially flat. Hispanics will double as a per…
Read More