Religion Dispatches
…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
Read More…giveness for ways we might have added to your pain.” “We’re hoping to do a better job of talking to and loving each other and holding true to our scriptural principles,” said Jane Higa, the school’s vice president for student life. That doesn’t mean the school’s policy will be changing anytime soon, though. Administrators say the ban is not on being gay but on the “practice”—just as there’s a ban on sex between unmarried straight students. In Higa…
Read More…, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bible Answer Man” Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute, tuning in like clockwork to his show weekdays 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Washington DC’s WAVA 105.1. Still, as much as I appreciated (and occasionally even found inspiring) these programs’ message of sel…
Read More…uzzFeed’s Patrick Strudwick. Lord Ivar Mountbatten, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, became the first openly gay British royal. Russia: Court bans LGBT news site Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that a Siberian court has banned one of the country’s most popular LGBT news sites “without warning.” Uganda: Police block pride march before it starts Police blocked supporters of LGBT equality from convening on a beach and told them to leave the area,…
Read More…heon told the Korea Times that he’s planner to enter politics “in order to promote diversity within Korean society and to help young people struggling to cope with their sexuality.” From the website Fridae: Male and female same-sex relations is legal in South Korea as it is not specifically mentioned in either the country’s Constitution or in the Civil Penal Code. Yet general awareness of the gay community has largely remains low despite recent ga…
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…d 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 thought I’d come to this What’s it all about? —Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, “I Don’t Know How…
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…he bounds of the critical methods that define academic inquiry—it would be better if fewer people, rather than more, had access. On the campaign trail his rhetoric is purged of explicit Christian language, favoring the bogeyman of liberal professors to the forces of Satan. But Santorum’s religious vision places his more sanitized comments into a disturbing context. The policy implications that such convictions would likely have (for example, on t…
Read More…acy to SBC traditionalism. If that’s what they want to teach, fine. It’s a free country, and there’s no reason to begrudge anyone their beliefs. But it’s simply horseshit to pretend that there wasn’t a historical process by which conservatives captured the reins of the denomination and have slowly but surely been purging even the mildest dissenting voices for the past 30 years. So let’s be clear: the conservative SBC ethics is only one among many…
Read More…s of the military, and that is protecting us from our enemies. The Uniform Code of Military Justice also prohibits things like adultery, so as we look at this slippery slope we’re on, what is the next step? Will we see a move to strike down that prohibition as well? Jackson and others speaking at the press conference also repeated the charge that repeal of DADT will cripple chaplains who will be forced to “water down their teachings” or perhaps ev…
Read More…trality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality.” Cameron also lays bare his quintessentially 21st century religiosity, proclaiming that “I am a member of the Church of England, and, I suspect, a rather classic one: not that regular in attendance, and a bit vague on some of the more diff…
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