Religion Dispatches
…that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not Denzel. It’s Jesus. For many women in churches like COGIC, being in love with Jesus means that most other men, whether desirable as a husband or not, stood in the way of the number one relationship. One person I interviewed even had a name for it: “being loosed” from your husband to do the Lord’s work. “Being loosed” could happen…
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…members of strict churches can’t uphold the high standards of living they promote, aspire to, and harangue people over. The endless carousel of revelations about the Catholic Church worldwide is exhibit A of that broken message. In that sense, there is nothing new here. The real story however, is that this case explodes the cover of the black church’s internal don’t ask, don’t tell policy which has had a profound effect on the community and its f…
Read More…ndraiser-in-Chief and as much as he might like to reach out to traditional Republican punching bags like Latinos, African Americans, and gays — they aren’t the ones giving up the big checks. It’s still the old guard — the religious right and those who use them — who continue to fill the RNC coffers. Steele can look conciliatory for the cameras, but when the rubber hits the road, the same old GOP minority bashing must begin. Both Steele and Priebus…
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…. I cringed in my seat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre as I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It w…
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…o be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.” She has also stated, incorrectly, that the founders “worked tirelessly” to end slavery. Peroutka and the IOTC, for their part, express affection for the Confederacy. In bestowing the “Courage of Daniel Award” on Moore on June 3, Peroutka, who frequently ribs people for being from t…
Read More…nt, as I wrote here at RD nearly a year ago: Barton’s Wallbuilders website promotes a collection of “resources on African American History.” Much of the material is written by Barton himself but one of the essays is [Stephen] McDowell’s, drawn almost entirely from Rushdoony’s work in the early 1960s. McDowell’s discussion of slavery, written in 2003, comes from Rushdoony’s more familiar Institutes of Biblical Law… (that) …promotes a “biblical worl…
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…uslim rhetoric is fueling extremism. At the United Nations, members of the African Group are pushing to overturn the recent decision by the Human Rights Council to hire an independent expert to monitor discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A vote in the General Assembly was postponed from this week until later in the month. From 76 Crimes: A large group of African nations, including Botswana and South…
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…n’s dying, like all deaths, as the shedding of a worn-out jacket. The soul freed of its tattered covering moves on to another life. That is somewhat but not entirely consistent with the Catholic teaching on death. As I mourn the death of this extraordinary man, whom I see in the famous photo smiling and more free than most, maybe, in handcuffs, smiling. I think of the Christ and the body. I think of how expert and deliberate Berrigan was in using…
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…nality.’” Of course, Richard Dawkins himself wasn’t sitting around writing code and coming up with reasonably civil responses to hypothetical religious proclamations for Atheos (although some less famous but equally antagonistic thinkers like David Silverman did contribute to the app’s content). And for many atheists, even those not prone to Dawkins’ venomous outbursts against religious people, his name lends the app credibility. He remains a figu…
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…poraries call “natural law,” loosely defined as a universal and unchanging code determined by God. “My conception of freedom is a moral ecology of things,” Mero says. “It’s not just liberty to do what you want to do as long as you don’t hurt somebody else… I believe freedom requires virtue. We have to be our better selves. And if we are not our better selves, then we are going to lose the free society.” But what does being one’s better self look l…
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