Religion Dispatches
…were terrified of him. The brothers never speak anymore; they talk on the phone at least once a day. It’s all there and it’s all unclear. All we know for a fact is that it all came apart very suddenly. On December 9, 2008, Bernie Madoff told his son, Mark, that he intended to pay out $173 million in holiday bonuses two months early. Deeply concerned, Mark revealed this to Andrew, who concluded that Madoff Securities should probably be re-named. T…
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…lves to be in a same-sex marriage,” reports Nicholas Hellen, “Doubling the number threatens the fragile truce on an issue that has divided the church since same-sex marriages were allowed in England and Wales in March 2014.” Iraq: Interview with Kurdish human rights activist Ayaz Shalal, a human rights activist from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was interviewed by the Washington Blade during a visit to the U.S. this month. Shalal said he ex…
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…elt that little sacristy door slightly creak open as I fumbled to dial the phone to call my mom. Was this it? Sadly, no. My excitement faded as I followed the livestream of the Synod of Bishops, punctuated by anger as I read the summit’s 41-page report. This past Friday I saw New Ways Ministry’s statement, “Synod Report Greatly Disappoints, But We Must Have Hope,” while walking down a busy DC thoroughfare. In it Francis DeBernardo, executive direc…
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…y came of it… [Crutcher’s] efforts were, however, carried out over the telephone and the conversations were primarily with receptionists. Rose takes the effort farther. Video is far more compelling than recordings of phone calls. According to the Los Angeles Times: Rose, the third of eight children, grew up in San Jose. Her father is an engineer for Sun Microsystems. She was home schooled… and also attended a part-time Christian school and a junio…
Read More…ars old. In the late-19th century, as immigration swelled the ranks of the American Jewish community, and, probably not coincidentally, anti-Semitic exclusion also increased, Jewish philanthropists began to develop strategies of pooling their resources and using them to create more sophisticated and progressive organizations. These central fundraising and allocation bodies became known as “Federations.” The first one, the forerunner of CJP, emerge…
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…al flagbearer” for the insurrectionists because he carried a spear with an American flag tied to it. Wearing a horned fur hat and no shirt, he screamed through a bullhorn encouraging people to fight against the elites “drinking our blood, eating our babies.” He was among the first 30 people to enter the Capitol building. His defense lawyer emphasized his navy service, and his diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder, calling him a “peaceful g…
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…ion about his bank account, credit cards, home address and social security number—was illegally retrieved, and that he was subjected to surveillance and phone-tapping. The church, meanwhile, countered that Behar’s article was a slanderous, sensationalist attack on a legitimate religious organization and part of a much longer history of misunderstanding and persecution that this religious minority has faced since its inception. In keeping w…
Read More…that cover abortion. But Marta was outraged by an email that went out from the state’s OFA director, specifically telling volunteers not to mention the Stupak amendment in their phone calls shortly before the House vote. Poor Stupak! So unimportant that he doesn’t even get mentioned by Organizing for America….
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…picked up quickly and loaded the dishwasher, I said yes. Then I checked my phone. Like many people, I keep it on silent unless I’m expecting a call, so I missed a called from my youngest daughter. Instead she left a text message. It read: “your hajj packgat came” (sic) I burst out crying. So much so that my other daughter came forward and said, “What’s wrong?!” I couldn’t speak. I just showed her the text message and cried and hugged her. To her c…
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…es would talk to me and let me do interviews. There were times when I made phone calls to inmates’ family members to let then know that visiting times had changed, to save them a long trip to the prison. I also visited the families of inmates with pastors and other volunteers to bring food, sometimes a gift a child’s dad had made. I basically become part of the lives of the people whose lives I wanted to document. How did a project you undertook f…
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