Religion Dispatches
…eve in, it’s not always clear what we should believe in. Granted, not all experience the West as disenchanted, but experiences of suffering and despair (addiction being one of many) can make a person sense acutely that they lack meaning in their life. AA members often say that they came to the program to stop drinking, but that they stayed to grow spiritually. Whether we read this as evidence of cultish brainwashing or a symptom of our disenchante…
Read More…eve in, it’s not always clear what we should believe in. Granted, not all experience the West as disenchanted, but experiences of suffering and despair (addiction being one of many) can make a person sense acutely that they lack meaning in their life. AA members often say that they came to the program to stop drinking, but that they stayed to grow spiritually. Whether we read this as evidence of cultish brainwashing or a symptom of our disenchante…
Read More…religious beliefs, leaders across sections came forward in decrying homosexuality and expressing their solidarity with the judgment.” Several public religious and political figures issued statements, ranging from deceitful to abusive, in favor of the criminalization of LGBTQ people, which they deemed “against the order of nature.” Right-wing responses delimited publicly-sanctioned and state-protected sexuality to heteronormativity and modeled a r…
Read More…ah (though medical marijuana will be on Utah ballots in November). I’m no expert on Utah’s criminal code, but I have a strong suspicion that it might have something to say about Kirby’s actions. In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne argues that in patriarchal cultures, “a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people… her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty. ” It…
Read More
…e and should be forgiven youthful “peccadillos.” For survivors, this paradox of exhibiting personal “integrity” while propping up racist, sexist, misogynist policies and practices is a familiar narrative. Of course, central to victim shaming and blaming is the narrative that there are fundamentally good men who never cross the line but for the slutty behavior of irresponsible women and girls. According to this view, predators are easy to spot, wea…
Read More…oned humans as the culmination of God’s specific acts of creation during six days approximately 6,000 years ago. It replaced this story with a less grand one of natural selection and random mutation across eons. And evolution also undermined the theologically important explanation for human and animal suffering, as the result of God’s fit punishment of Adam and Eve for “original sin.” (Today, 57 percent of white evangelicals reject evolution, beli…
Read More…ar, when a federal judge in Wisconsin found the relevant portions of the tax code to be unconstitutional, but the three judges on the appellate panel did not tip their hand, although they showed few outward signs that they agreed. The regulation at issue is more than sixty years old, enacted in the 1950s to ensure that ministers at churches who could not afford to provide them with housing could nevertheless benefit from the same tax breaks as min…
Read More…it’s unclear how the case would proceed. According to the Brazilian penal code, criminal charges for genocide can be brought against nationals but foreigners cannot be prosecuted under national law. One possible explanation for FUNAI’s approach is to generate awareness of the detrimental outlook for the agency and the indigenous communities they protect. The incident comes on the heels of growing threats to indigenous sovereignty by a new right-w…
Read More…der identity (as defined in paragraph 249(c)(4) of title 18, United States Code), sexual orientation, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds made available under [VAWA], and any other program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds appropriated for grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance…
Read More…se of Marriage Act, for example, is on his third wife. Which marriage was “sanctified,” exactly? Mohler does not go into any prescriptions for saving marriage in his piece, however, so we are left to guess what steps he might advise conservative Christians to take. I suspect—being Southern Baptist—he might suggest something along the lines of “traditional” marriage advice: abstinence before marriage, then, once married, the woman “submits” to the…
Read More