Religion Dispatches
…ement on the group’s Italian-language website declared, “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world.” The statement alluded to the burning of heretics, the repression of Galileo, the genocide of Native Americans, aiding Nazi fugitives, and the more recent sexual abuse scandal. Anonymous members attemp…
Read More…d only truly became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and is known today as one of the most influential Catholic theologians with regards to evolution in the second half of the 20thcentury. To chart this influence, one need only note Teilhard’s citations by the three most recent Popes. In 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II echoed Teilhard’s vision of a cosmic Eucharist in the encyclical Ecclesia Eucharista: Because even when it is celebrated on…
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…ther such biblical warriors as David, Joshua, and Rahab as role models for today’s Christians. Prophet Kris Vallotton of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California, for example, preached to children about, “Your Identity as Sons of God.” He got them to repeat after him in call and response style: “I am amazing. I am God’s greatest creation… I was born to do greater works than Jesus… and I have the mind of Christ. Therefore I…
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…r she described herself as “white.” Though it makes us squirm in our seats today, clearly whiteness meant something different to her than it does to most of us today. Grappling with that reality is one of the challenges of the book. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? There are hundreds! Let me name two. First’s there’s Jill Lepore’s The Name of War. It’s the book that is the most direct (I hope not derivative) infl…
Read More…without any religious exemptions, were scheduled to host a conference call today at 11:30 a.m. They postponed it after it became clear the White House was set to announce the accommodation today. The letter says the religious conscience of women and the separation of church and state support the requirement for coverage without an exemption for religious institutions. It’s clear that the White House was not seeking to appease the U.S. Conference o…
Read More…ures said donors should be guided by in-country LGBT movements. “In Uganda today, in Nigeria today, you will find [they are] well organized. They are fighting back, and this should be our reference point,” he said. More than 20 African civil society groups called on the African Union to resist the spread of anti-gay laws like those in Uganda and Nigeria: As African civil society organisations whose members live and work to improve the lives of all…
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…os, issues a statement with some truly dubious word choices and arguments: Today, the Supreme Court has upheld nothing more than a Ponzi scheme to expand the abortion business. If this legislation is not overturned by the next administration, Obamacare’s socialist-style diktats will be used, not to provide better or more affordable health care, but to expand Planned Parenthood’s abortion empire across the backs of American taxpayers and people of…
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…can’t be applied to the loving, committed gay and lesbian relationships of today. Then you turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially chapters 14 and 15, to propose a way to live together in a “third way” and make the church not just “affirming” of LGBT people, but fully inclusive. I just assumed there was a well-acknowledged category of “disputable matters” (like those found in Romans 14 and 15). I grew up in the Jesus Freak movement of the…
Read More…l scholarship, a yet more widespread commentary on the tendency of many of today’s evangelical leaders to focus on tiny segments of scripture—this might be a valuable service. And might it cement an accommodation not with the evangelicals, but with secular intellectuals? That might be a good thing. The salient solidarity today may not be with the community of faith but among those who accept Enlightenment-generated standards for cognitive plausibi…
Read More…by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.” Today, Cuba is more in our reach. As a Cuban-American from Miami I have been raised amidst the existential crisis of the Cuban exile community, a community with a rabid anger towards the Castro regime and simultaneous love and compassion for their fellow Cubans on the island. I, like many children of exiles, was raised holding my breath for the death of Fidel Castro, for an…
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