Religion Dispatches
…ad no idea about my chances even after I committed the two-thousand dollar deposit. Instead, I just followed all the steps and just after Ramadan I surrendered my passport along with the filled-in visa application, immunization record, waiver, six passport-size photos, and the remaining balance of the cost of the trip. Of course I didn’t hear anything from the tour company, so I called them to make sure everything was in order. Still nervous two w…
Read More…s Bruce, transgender Venezuelan National Assembly candidate Tamara Adrián, Costa Rican Deputy Minister of the Interior Carmen Muñoz, Honduran Vice Minister of Human Rights and Justice Karla Cueva, Gonzalo Cid Vega of the Chilean Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, gay Long Beach (Calif.) Mayor Robert Garcia and others. Kenita Placide of United and Strong, an LGBT advocacy group in St. Lucia, also attended the conference alongside Marcela Romero…
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…website : ‘There’s been a disturbing video that’s been making its rounds, promoting a Christian lady who’s a lesbian and Christian at the same time. She’s promoting the virtue of being a happy homosexual Christian. I find this very disturbing and misleading.’ He slams Pastor Pauline Ong of Free Community Church, who identifies herself as a gay believer. Yang calls gay Christians an oxymoron: ‘A homosexual Christian is an oxymoron. You cannot live…
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…laws.” Even though some political activists in Middle Eastern and North African countries promote “Islamic law” in reaction to the imposition of European-style government and legal systems on them, there is no single school of thought on what shari’ah, or divine law, is or means—and there is no single, accepted legal code. “If Islamic law were some book where you could look to it and cite to it, and say, it says right here that Western democracy…
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…uples. The third criterion Dr. King identifies is that “an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” For same sex couples to have legal access just like heterosexual couples…
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…like “under God” and “in God we trust,” the special status of clergy in American society has gone unquestioned for many years. If Crabb’s ruling is sustained on appeal, it will substantially impact both ministers and their congregations. A minister with a $2,000 mortgage and $500 in additional monthly housing expenses can currently exclude $30,000 of income from taxation annually. The elimination of the housing allowance exclusion would likely inc…
Read More…e posted on his own Facebook page, in which he claims that contemporary America is “like we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel” and that “Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and that, to me, is what matters most.” Ryan has been under fire for these comments because, charge groups like the American Values Network, Rand was an atheist who rejected Christianity and or…
Read More…questioning at a Congressional hearing, wants to run for president. Robert Costa at the National Review had the lowdown yesterday, which includes the sort of inconvenient fact that Cruz was born in Canada. Canada! Land of socialist health care and such. But Cruz apparently isn’t concerned that anyone will birther him: Cruz isn’t worried that his birth certificate will be a problem. Though he was born in Canada, he and his advisers are confident th…
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…e a Contemporary Christian Music artist, Spears has deep roots in white American evangelicalism. Born and raised in the Bible Belt and surrounded by conservative evangelical Protestants, Spears grew up Southern Baptist and spent her childhood performing in Baptist choirs. For her very first stage performance, when she was five years old, she sang “What Child Is This” at her kindergarten graduation. Spears was actually a standard-bearer for evangel…
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…med in Catholic settings. Although Catholic officials expanded an existing code of medical ethics in 1948 to include directives on contraception and abortion, Catholic hospitals didn’t share a unified ethical code until 1971. Reports of hospitals in some dioceses performing abortions and providing contraception to patients led the USCCB to publish a new version of the ERDs and require every diocese to adopt them. This would prevent what Father O’R…
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