Religion Dispatches
…rence to “religious freedom” from Romney. Insiders know that the latter is code for exempting individuals and institutions from following government mandates on health care and provisions on anti-discrimination. But to the middle, Romney’s comment surely passed under the radar. And as for Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, even Paul Ryan is for that now. All this in the shadow of an unprecedented legal war against women’s reproductive choices, and an ever-morp…
Read More…ed, part of a broad recognition of the rights of vulnerable people to live free from violence and discrimination. Mexico City is not part of any Mexican state. A documentary about a same-sex couple getting married in the town of Mexicali in Baja California has been released. “Etiqueta no rigurosa,” the debut for filmmaker Cristina Herrera Bórquez, “offers audiences a front row seat to the aggravating and bureaucratic nightmare that this couple fac…
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…octrine but a fight for the soul of the church. Francis and his allies are promoting a vision of the church that’s much more live-and-let-live, repeatedly turning to the word “mercy” to describe how they view the application of doctrine to the actual lives of Catholics, guided by a sense of the larger mission of the church as spreading the Gospel, not enforcing laws. Conservatives, led by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the D…
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…prophesying about election fraud are legion. In his 2020 book God’s Chaos Code, Prophet Lance Walnau writes that there could be a “Trump landslide on election day,” but that absentee ballots could turn this victory into defeat. The uncertainty of a dubious or contested election outcome, he believes, would lead “street units” of Antifa and Black Lives Matter to make an “open assault on America,” and he further believes that the Supreme Court might…
Read More…marginalized communities and to honor their country’s commitment to basic freedoms guaranteed in the Moldovan constitution. “Moldova has already made great democratic, constitutional, and economic advancements. It was only three years ago that the nation took an important stand for human rights and basic freedoms when it overturned a similar anti-LGBT propaganda law,” said Representative Lowenthal. “The U.S. values its relationship with Moldova a…
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…than thinking about the self as being a language—as being like a computer code that speaks—we think about the self as a cluster of forces. [These forces] make us what we are, and our decisions come from that rather than from this linguistic layer, which is actually constituted by that more fundamental cluster of forces. That’s what I see affect theory doing: upsetting this idea that human beings start with language and that we do what we do becau…
Read More…Christians is not reason enough for a divorce and, more often than not, is code for “serious sin.” Pentecostals have a history of being strict about reasons to divorce, adultery being scripturally the only reason to do so. For those who divorce and who have a denominational affiliation through ministerial license, a divorce can mean, at best, additional scrutiny and at worst, stripping of ministerial credentials. Of course, that never has stopped…
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…luding those below the poverty line, federal employees, those cared for by Indian Health Service and Peace Corps volunteers—who fall into the canyons created by sweeping bans on federal funding for abortion. Caitlin Borgmann, a CUNY law professor and board member of the National Abortion Federation, wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times this August when the paper ran a story on the challenges facing American servicewomen that omitted…
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…nd active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks Mr. Potter is the hero…
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…Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any of Sheldon Adelson’s businesses? Trying to draw a line between “business with religious roots” and “everything else in global c…
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