Religion Dispatches
…r living”). This is often lost on commentators. While scientists and journalists assess AA by the standards of the medical community (i.e. percentage of individuals who remain sober), AA members assess one another according to quite different metrics: levels of honesty, compassion, open-mindedness, and magnanimity. Although AA was instrumental in shifting the discourse about alcoholism from one of “sin” to “sickness” it nevertheless retained a foc…
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…can be picked off as so many inert targets in a videogame you have a cheat code for. I’m sure many Arabs and Muslims across the region watched this and thought two things: what exactly was the point of independence, if some 60 years later a country has no actual capacity to defend itself? And, given that, why is it Western powers are still rescuing Arabs or Muslims, as they see it, on their own terms? 5) Let’s not pretend that this is truly an a…
Read More…der identity (as defined in paragraph 249(c)(4) of title 18, United States Code), sexual orientation, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds made available under [VAWA], and any other program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds appropriated for grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance…
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…bal religion. That assessment echoes a common view among right-wing nationalists, including administration figures like former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and senior political advisor Steve Bannon. It’s worth noting that the US government already does make de facto decisions about what counts as a religion and what doesn’t. The tax code makes implicit judgments about religious legitimacy in parceling out breaks to some groups and not o…
Read More…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…
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…CPAC’s performative divisiveness fool you—the candidates present only a slightly different brand of authoritarianism or even fascism, but the core of their ideology is the same. Both are anti-democratic, pro-natalist, ethno-Nationalist, right-wing Christian, and authoritarian. And when it comes to those things, the Republican Party is not divided at all: they present a pretty united front. Like a closed fist….
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…it won’t happen until there is a massive shift in understanding about what promotes “security.” Israelis have bought into a worldview about security that predominates in much of the world and is the central principle of American foreign policy: “homeland security can only be achieved by domination, either military, economic or diplomatic, of all those who might be potential adversaries.” It was this strategy of domination that led the United State…
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…o sense founded on the Christian religion.” On the back of the pillar is a list of “Punishments for Breaking the Ten Commandments,” such as Deuteronomy 13:10: “Other gods: Thou shalt stone him with stones that he die, because he hath thought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy god.” The intention, obviously, is to demonstrate that atheists, as opposed to Bible-thumpers, are ethical souls, and that America is not a Christian nation. Atheists have…
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…e in the earliest years of his work, in South Africa. To demand a detailed list of specifics from today’s Occupiers would be like making the same demand of Gandhi in the 1890s. Yet Gandhi must have known intuitively, even then, an essential truth he would later articulate clearly: The greatness of any society is not measured by its gross product, nor by the stellar achievements of its privileged few. The measure of greatness is the way a society t…
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…American Judaism. But what does that mean for Jewish law? Here is a brief list of the “changes” that Conservative Judaism has made to halacha: Driving on the sabbath Mixed gender worship Ordaining women Recognition of same sex marriages and ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy These examples display the variance between Conservative Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, but who would really argue that these two movements are not rooted in the same faith tradition…
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