Religion Dispatches
…ndering evangelicals, or the intolerance of Christian and Muslim fundamentalists), many people in the United States remain unaware of the progressive potential of organized religion. Second, many people see immigration in “them” vs. “us” terms, and in fact, our fates and destinies are intertwined. Many religious people get that, and integrate that understanding into their actions. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? This is a bo…
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…undary policing around gender, race, and sexuality rises to the top of its list of concerns to the detriment of dealing with urgent internal issues of abuse. Of course, as I and others have argued before, abuse is a natural corollary of theology that limits women’s recourse to men’s power. As long as the SBC maintains gender hierarchy as a core feature of what it means to be in “cooperation” with the denomination, it will continue to censure its m…
Read More…Israel, allow openly gay service members without any adverse affect upon military cohesion or readiness. As for natural disasters, Levin may want to study up on what causes earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes. I don’t see “gays and lesbians” listed among the data. But, fundamentalists of all stripes never let the facts get in the way of a good, scary, story. ”We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our mili…
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…an e-mail invitation to 30,000 people on the Standing on the Side of Love list asking them to join her in Phoenix. Rev. Paul Langston-Daley, minister at the West Valley UU Church in Glendale, served as a bridge between the national UUA and local organizing work. The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock provided travel support for those unable to get there themselves. Months of preparation went into making the experience a meaningfu…
Read More…owever, jumped by six percent. The FBI include “sexual orientation” in the list of statistics they collect from law enforcement around the country, but the federal hate crimes law does not include that category – something the House has been trying to change with H.R. 1592. Ironically, religious people, who are luckily suffering fewer attacks, are opposed to H.R. 1592 because it might limit their ability to use their words to spur even more attack…
Read More…resses him on a position get stonewalled and badgered? Not fun to watch or listen to, my friends. Not fun at all. Whence cometh the prickliness of Mitt Romney? Eight theses: A. a personality flaw B. a result of having been insulated by class privilege C. a result of developing his leadership style in an LDS institutional culture wherein leaders are expected to appear “flawless” and dissent and open disagreement is not sanctioned D. a consequence o…
Read More…xuality, which Rushdoony did. But I have argued that this rather sensationalist approach to examining the place of Reconstructionism in contemporary politics undermines efforts to see real influence. DeMint doesn’t advocate stoning, even though he aligns himself with Reconstructionists. He does advocate undoing decades of efforts to secure basic civil rights for gays and lesbians (and apparently for unmarried women as well). He does, it seems, su…
Read More…in liberal values in the service of illiberal policies. At the top of this list was civility. I argued that some speakers have used the charge of incivility to silence or otherwise inhibit their critics. For my case study I used Ryan T. Anderson, who had written: The principal strategy of the forces that have worked for 20 years to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions has been cultural intimidation – bullying others by threatening the stig…
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…Newly Deconverted,” contained no mention of the Sikh shooting, but it did list an instance where a Florida door-to-door salesman was shot, and noted the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. PZ Myers, who is among the most visible atheist bloggers in the world, did write about the shooting twice, though one of his posts simply referenced the shooting as a way to condemn America’s “gun culture,” while the other focused on Pat Robertson’s comme…
Read More…sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault last week. The hand of St. James made it back to Reading Abbey just in time for St. James Day. A school board in Virginia has removed the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet from its sixth-grade reading lists because they found the book to be anti-Mormon. The Boston Globe reminds us all that the two Mormon GOP presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and John Huntsman, have different takes on their…
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