Religion Dispatches
…due process, based on the swiftness with which they were required to show compliance with the new rulings. The AP also reports that the Department of Health and the Environment plans to implement restrictive TRAP laws, possibly identical to the ones blocked by Murguia, on a schedule that would make them permanent. In order to be permanent, the regulations would have to take effect only after a period of public comment. By contrast, the regulation…
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…box. But I’m still watching. Still waiting for a sign that I am loved by a community where I lived for twenty years of my life. And it’s just not coming from you, my dear ex-brothers and ex-sisters in Christ. You’ve washed your hands of me, haven’t you? I carry a virus you don’t want to catch. I’m out here in the filthy garment, the de rigueur for infidels. I’m the one who was of you, but not really of you, or I wouldn’t have left. That’s what the…
Read More…g, highly observant LDS father. My friend described a brief, tension-laden phone call between father and son, wedged into a few free minutes after a church meeting. “Now, I’m going to serve my family,” said the father, bringing the call to a close. “Because that’s what I do.” And Mitt Romney is going to serve his country. Because that’s what he does. Like it or not. That joyless put-your-shoulder-to-the-wheel tenacity is setting the tone for the G…
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…universals. In a super white, super loud flash… or a DJ’s croon… or a telephone’s brrng brrng, when you become forever lonesome. Because you know the real secret. Anything can happen. Aliens could land. *** Among the outrages of living in a time of violence is that victims feel the need to rank their suffering. “What I suffered pales in comparison,” the Aurora victim who tramped over his dead girlfriend, who still has shrapnel in his own body, t…
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…social developments. The new technologies are not only changing the way we communicate, but communication itself, so much so that it could be said that we are living through a period of vast cultural transformation. This means of spreading information and knowledge is giving birth to a new way of learning and thinking, with unprecedented opportunities for establishing relationships and building fellowship. Blogs Ritchie of this turn in the Pope’s…
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…ld. In the past decade, the Roman Catholic clergy abuse, News of the World phone-hacking, and Wikileaks scandals have marked new, and only very incompletely explored, ethical territory as we sort out the best ways to balance personal privacy and public safety as these are impacted by our engagement with new media. But even given difficulties defining necessary and appropriate boundaries of personal, professional, and institutional transparency, we…
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…st around 6 p.m. We watch its arrival on our big TV, snuggled under a down comforter. The weather graphics show the eye of the storm moving closer and closer to the New Jersey coastline. The closer it gets, the stormier it gets outside. My attention flickers between the virtual hurricane on TV and the rattling and cracking and whooshing sounds of the massive winds now hitting the neighborhood. There is a huge explosion; a flash lights up the wh…
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…And nobody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowe…
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…n faith, asserts that faith is “integral” to the Party. But whose faith? A combined 30% of Obama’s support comes from voters who are not Christian: 23% from the unaffiliated and 7% from non-Christian religious voters. By contrast, just 10% of Romney’s support comes from non-Christians (8% unaffiliated, 2% non-Christian religious). How many points does Obama really score by burnishing his evangelical cred? Does it outpace the losses of those put of…
Read More…t Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into an anti-Mormon ad lib, it does not make for a concerted anti-Mormon effort. (Leave that to orthographically challenged “Heaven is Easy” ministry in Florida.) May cool heads prevail as the race heats up in its fina…
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