Religion Dispatches
…ike” the site for the benefit of my Facebook friends or tweet about it on Twitter? Suppose my Twitter feed is integrated into a virtual and/or physical religious service (as I will do in a global, ecumenical, tweeted Pentecost “prayer” service in a couple weeks). What exactly is my practice then? National Day of Butter Churning? It is not a remarkable feat of insight to suggest that whatever we come to call this category of practice, it will soon…
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…f African American communities a disservice and fails to consider why a growing number are shifting away from belief— a shift that is tied to a long history of African Americans challenging belief in God. This narrowing of African American’s opinions on belief misses an important point. “Free thought,” in a variety of forms, has a presence in African American life that is centuries old. To question or deny God is as African American as is embracin…
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…h that too often oppresses LGBTQ persons. I really hope that young persons will read it and will take courage from it. I’ve heard from a number of young LGBTQ persons, black especially, who thank me for the book and said they have wanted a resource like this for some time to combat some of the negative statements that they hear on the regular basis, particularly within the churches, within the churches that they love. I’m telling them to not recei…
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…as the title of Stephen K. Ray’s 1997 book on the phenomenon), has been growing steadily for decades, but with the help of a solid foundation of literature, exemplar converts from previous generations, burgeoning traditional and new media outlets, and the coming of age of Millennial evangelicals, it is seeing its pace quicken dramatically. Back in 1985, when many of the most recent converts were still singing Sunday School songs in evangelical chu…
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…dividual conscience; to believe as we will and to change our minds freely, without undue influence from government or from powerful religious institutions. It also means the right to practice our beliefs free from the same constraints. The right to believe differently from the rich and the powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press, the other two elements of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.” How does your report fit int…
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…is Holiness repeated his oft-quoted maxim about what to do when science conflicts with Buddhadharma: adjust or throw out Buddhadharma. After all, this is the only way to be true to Buddhadharma itself. This is Enlightenment thinking worthy of Kant himself. This is scientific rationality in all its rigor. But the truth is, Buddhism does part ways with the pure reason of Kant and his ilk. That is because there is something you should believe—eventua…
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…that happened over a twelve month period in my family’s life (as well as a number of flashbacks from when I was a young boy). In addition, there were a number of things I didn’t get the chance to explore for a very practical reason: I had a deadline. Working in publishing I’m very conscious about how important deadlines are. Writers need to make those deadlines and because I worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a…
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…(see fates of: money-changers in the temple, Judas Iscariot, etc.) *** As Twitter lit up with real-time news and updates of a coordinated terrorist attack in Paris on November 13th of 2015, there was little time to digest or confirm the information overload. I kept refreshing my almost entirely English-speaking timeline in the vain hope of just one credible update from Paris that told us more than we already knew, which was that we knew close to n…
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…he synod’s concluding suggestion that individual Catholics discuss divorce with a priest will prove difficult for Catholics in Africa. Even with the increase in vocations, given the ratio of Catholics to priests in Africa, finding a priest to counsel an individual about marriage and family issues is a struggle. Oscar Momanyi, a second-year Kenyan seminarian studying at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, has witnessed this problem first han…
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…t to be specific.” “In sharing our stories,” said Partridge, who testified with a number of transgender Episcopalians and their advocates before the deputies and bishops, “we were really trying to be very specific” about the experiences of transgender people in the Church. This experience, he said, “is something that we really need to name at this time in the Church. We just believed this was important in reflecting not only our own lives but also…
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