Religion Dispatches
…pe. I wanted to stay in and help. So you prepared for a lifetime of Church service, starting as most young men do with two years of missionary service. You had a plan to work and pay for your mission. You started your paperwork. You met with your bishop. And when you did, you brought up gay marriage. Why? I brought it up because I was afraid of being sent out on a mission and the issue of gay marriage coming up and not being able to preach that it…
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…, consider the claim of the Southern restauranteur who in the 1960s denied service to African Americans on the ground that his religion mandated the separation of the races. (A unanimous Supreme Court called the restauranteur’s defense “patently frivolous.”) Today, there is a similar but not identical logic in some of the controversies on which I have previously reported, especially those of the baker who wouldn’t create a custom cake for a gay we…
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…“first, most cherished liberty”—and that to deny it is a violation of core American values: Freedom is not only for Americans, but we think of it as something of our special inheritance, fought for at a great price, and a heritage to be guarded now. We are stewards of this gift, not only for ourselves but for all nations and peoples who yearn to be free. Catholics in America have discharged this duty of guarding freedom admirably for many generati…
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…firmed earlier proclamations that NatCon is the conservative movement: The American conservative movement is so influenced by what’s happened here…this is the place of the intellectual leadership of the American conservative movement…thank you for everything that you do—it actually matters. Vance said that when he came to speak at the first NatCon in 2019, he was a “convert to Trump’s America First-agenda.” Even in 2019, he explains, there were me…
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…hat Phillips could not refuse to serve interracial couples (but could deny service to interreligious and same-sex couples) is one way for them to do so. As we have already seen, their proposition makes little sense in terms of strict scrutiny, and in fact the Colorado law at issue in Masterpiece Cakeshop likewise does not differentiate among the kinds of discrimination from which it seeks to protect citizens. Waggoner’s and Francisco’s claims only…
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…,” Gabriel Rutan-Ram said. “If an agency is getting tax money to provide a service, then everyone should be served—it shouldn’t matter whether you’re Jewish, Catholic or an atheist. We’re all citizens of Tennessee, regardless of our religion.” Defenders of the bill deny that it’s discrimination to deny anyone service who doesn’t conform to their doctrines. Bradley Williams, president of the formerly Methodist-affiliated, Holston United Methodist H…
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…Kirill would continue to be commemorated at St. Nicholas. Then, after the service, he told the clergy that their dispute with Kirill was of great concern to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The clergy of St. Nicholas refused to relent. It was at this point the threats began. A service was interrupted by a man who broke a window; an online smear campaign was launched against the parish; and the church was vandalized with the pro-Putin, pro…
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…t—evangelical practice itself is arguably one source of that cult. Evangelicals have always tended to invest the preacher and his words with central importance, an importance that has too often been wielded not just in the service of the Lord but also in the service of the preacher’s own power. And that, of course, is a risky set-up when it comes to sex—a sign that supposedly godly lives can turn into a living hell, right here, right now….
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…to create theological imperatives for fighting on behalf of empire (recent American history indicates how powerful such pseudo-theological narratives in service of the state can be). Thus we observe that later exegetes and jurists began to make frequent exceptions to the injunction against committing aggression contained in Qur’an 2:190 and preferred to understand the verse as mandating primarily non-combatant immunity without placing any restrict…
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…involved in discussion about whether a local church could be used for the service and whether local clergy ought to participate. There are differing perceptions about whether she instructed local pastors not to allow the ordination service to be held in local churches. It is hard to know all that went on behind the scenes. In any case, she encouraged her colleagues to “be extravagant in hospitality” to those who would be involved even if the deno…
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