Religion Dispatches
…ng like the millenial South if they want to stick around. * I’m using data from The ARDA, which break down membership by state, but which apparently don’t match the SBC’s self-reported numbers. If anyone from the convention has state-level data they want to send me, I’ll gladly update the analysis….
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…arge number of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithfulness no longer present even among the faithful. They ask about the c…
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…but by quite a few. Persons within the community self-identify, and by self-identifying they say they don’t want to be put into a box. They don’t want to use these binary categories of male and female, straight or homosexual. So when one says queer nowadays, one is intentionally pushing back against the binary conversations that often happen when we’re talking about ourselves. Persons who self-identify as queer want to indicate that they understan…
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…ty enabling them to take over a number of jobs, from waiters to nurses to 9-1-1 operators. Low-skilled workers have been displaced en masse, spawning the “We Are People” movement. But Humans isn’t concerned with the politics of this world so much as it is with the emotional toll it might take on a middle class family like the Hawkins, who purchase a synth they call Anita in the pilot episode. We see the mother, Laura Hawkins, cringe when her young…
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…Big Push for Midwives, an advocacy organization for expanding access to out-of-hospital care, says that home birth advocacy is “probably the only grassroots movement that includes roughly equal numbers of pro-life and pro-choice individuals. We often hear shock from legislatures, saying they have never before seen these two groups come together on the same piece of legislation.” Shaye Miller, previously the member chairwoman at Nebraska Friends of…
Read More…ummer Games. But the Pew Forum’s findings are worth remembering: A growing number of urban, educated, 20-something Chinese men and women are increasingly interested in the topic. More on religion: a story last week from the Columbus Dispatch reported that United Methodist congregations “could share pastors and combine churches with a Lutheran denomination under a partnership approved by the denomination last week.” (The Evangelical Lutheran Church…
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…but far superior troll than Trump himself, whom he’d all-but-challenged-to-a-dick-measuring contest on Twitter months before, resulting in an apparent change in attitude. North Korea is the only sovereign nation with a ghost as the official head of state. A head of state whose image is embossed and ensconced and enshrined to maximize his visibility to the enslaved and starving who cannot leave, and might not choose to if they could considering th…
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…no “forbidden work” can be performed in preparation of food. (There are non-Kosher restaurants in Israel, but no non-Kosher food in the Knesset building unless someone sneaks it in!) The Knesset has three cafeterias: one serving only “milk” foods and two serving “meat” foods. In late June, one of the two meat cafeterias was shut down when a diner reported finding a cockroach on a plate of rice. The closure was not done by the Israel health authori…
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…. What I’d like to quote now, however, is the next line: “Open the doors, off with the shoulder-straps, join us in a taste of freedom.” Translation via http://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/ — (Project team: Agnes Parker: translation/Eja Werner: coordination)…
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…a has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African v…
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