Religion Dispatches
…with a nine-year-old who has been raped would not believe that the most decent and moral thing one can do is terminate the pregnancy? Can you imagine a pastor not standing with that family, that child and those doctors assuring them that they are making the right decision and offering compassion and comfort?…
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…ch, unless they were slaves or non-believers. In 1215, the Church decreed that a “licit” marriage required that the bride have a dowry (which implied parental approval), that the banns be published three weeks in advance, and that the marriage take place in a church. But an “illicit” marriage was equally binding in the church’s eyes: the children were seen as legitimate; the wife was entitled to her “widow’s third” of the inheritance; and the coup…
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…ry is eminently “Christian” in a certain sense: I believe it is rooted in what Jesus actually preached, as opposed to what became enshrined in Christian tradition. But I would never expect Christians to give my interpretations of the Gospels equal time with their own within their own community institutions. This is particularly relevant to Muslims, as it goes without saying that Muslims find themselves in less-than-friendly sociopolitical circumst…
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…ugh they know they won’t find it? What pot of gold is there at the end of that search? What happens when you recite the last digit of pi? What’s it like to hold the infinite in your hand? “When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun,” said Max in Pi. “So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began…
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…ing, careening beat. I catch myself thinking how sexy he is. And I wonder what that means. And I realize I don’t care. • Riding the volume knob, I split the difference between waking my parents and coaxing all the ecstasy I can from the TV’s tin-can speaker. I don’t know how to take this I don’t see why he moves me He’s a man He’s just a man Should I bring him down Should I scream and shout Should I speak of love Let my feelings out? I never thoug…
Read More…orted this morning that the Italian branch of Anonymous, those hackers best known for attacks on Scientology, decided to send a message to the Catholic Church by shutting down the official Vatican website (still not responding as of this posting). What are the Church’s misdeeds, according to these code crusaders? They go back to the selling of indulgences in the 16th century. And more recently, of course, there’s the Church’s interference in Italy…
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…‘higher power,’ and his doubts about the afterlife.” Smith also reported that Mansfield said in the interview that he entered Trinity having heard “that Obama’s church was a cult, something un-Christian, that Reverend Wright was a nut,” but emerged with the view that it is “a pretty solid Christian church.” In the context of the 2008 election, at at time when there is a great fear on the right that Obama might lure some evangelical voters away fr…
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…of such change. I think #Occupy is too anti-linear for its own good, and that it should learn from the Kabbalah that balance between circle and line is important. And I think there are a lot of linear, incremental steps we as a society could take right now to close the wealth gap somewhat and make our economy fairer. I get irritated when more left-wing Occupy-ers suggest there’s no difference between the two major parties, because on these issues…
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…could be the impact of academia falling? Well, I would make the argument that the other structures that I’m going to talk about here had the root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders of our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall. What we have here, as Joe Laycock notes, is a meta-narrative of cosmic conflict between the…
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…solutions to preventable death. In remembrance of every enslaved African that longed for freedom under the irrational threat of violence, the Native American victims of Wounded Knee, and every interned Japanese American, we make America redeemable by the policies we pass between prayers. In remembrance of the dead, we turn our collective power as voters and democratic participants into sacred acts. Through political action, people of faith and co…
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