Religion Dispatches
…s. Now, social media has become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the phone to Sarah Palin, and counsel her about her kids’ activity on Facebook. Bristol Palin found time from her “Dancing with the stars” practice to get on Facebook with her sister Willow to ride on a friend who had the chutzpah to say “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is failing so hard right now.” Willow’s response was to call the poster a gay slur, and Bristol…
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…the most affluent neighborhoods in the country, home to a host of foreign military commissions and attachés. Several houses down from the now-empty “center for babies,” at the Chevy Chase Baptist Church, an administrator told us that the organization had relocated to DC proper. Glancing at Kathryn’s stomach and assuming the worst, she warned us that the organization “no longer cares for infants.” At the Washington location, next to a hospital and…
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…resident-Elect Barack Hussein Obama came out to us, introduced the First Family, and delivered in his uncanny ministerial tone the sobering, yet timely, speech that so many of us will remember. Department colleagues, family members, and friends continue to prod me about my experience with stunning disbelief—“You were there? You were actually there!” Yes, I was. And while it was as a significant moment in our country’s history, it wasn’t the only o…
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…ns they hope to overthrow. Not much inspiration happening when the process mimics a board meeting. What my Fred Shuttlesworth piece showed was that there wasn’t consensus in the Civil Rights Movement either. Lots of people in the movement disagreed about violence vs. nonviolence, civil disobedience vs. abiding by the law, etc. What may undermine the Occupy movement is a sense that they must have complete consensus. Not going to happen. The most t…
Read More…sday, to every registered Republican or non-aligned Iowa voter with a cell phone on record. . . . The video’s star is Molotov Mitchell, whom Cary K. Gordon, president of PeaceMakers Institute and pastor of Sioux City’s Cornerstone Church, calls “the guerilla warrior of Judeo-Christian political commentary.” Mitchell is an edgy independent filmmaker whose Illuminati Pictures delivers something akin to an animated political cartoon weekly at WorldN…
Read More…There’s a bench. There’s shrubbery. It’s peaceful. The mausoleum has the family name on it—it’s a part of our family history.” But history’s darker side haunts perceptions of cremation. The fact that Jewish bodies were once systematically burned renders cremation disturbing for many. “The Holocaust was one of the main things I had to come to terms with when I was thinking about cremation,” says Linda Winters. “But in the end, I didn’t think it was…
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…ide representatives from a number of anti-trans organizations, including familiar faces like the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation. The “Changed Movement” began, according to its website, when Williams and Woning testified along with 30 others and delivered a book with stories of “ex-gays” to California Senators who were, at the time, considering a ban on conversion therapy. Subsequently, the story goes, “heartened by [his] conve…
Read More…of the judiciary,” he said. Chung also emphasized that Kim hosted an academic seminar on homosexuality. Kim, if approved, could designate judges supportive of homosexuality to be Constitutional Court justices. Under law, the Supreme Court‘s chief is supposed to name three of the Constitutional Court’s nine justices. Brazil: In victory for evangelical psychologist, Court reverses of 18-year-old ban on gay ‘cure’ therapy A court overturned an 18-ye…
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…ch worse than the feedback I got from the “angry atheists.” How did your coming out give your son permission to come out as an atheist, and your brother to come out as a survivor of clergy sexual abuse? I’ve never thought of it this way. When the first person takes the step, it seems like other people have courage to stand up. I’m very proud and supportive of both my son and my brother. What reaction did you get when the Humanist Community at Harv…
Read More…t housing market, such that the federal government will buy up an enormous number of imminent foreclosures (how?), mandate a new evaluation of the real value of these homes (how?), then enable homeowners to re-negotiate their current mortgages and to stay in their homes (huh?). The failure of “Fannie and Freddie,” McCain insisted, was “the match that lit this forest fire.” And apparently he believes that you can dig the necessary fire-break with e…
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