Religion Dispatches
…y Catholics for the past four decades, Sister Joan Dawber running a safe house for victims of human trafficking, Sister Donna Quinn fighting for a woman’s right to have an abortion and Sister Simone Campbell leading the Nuns on the Bus to lobby for political justice for the poorest of the poor in America. These are women whose praises we should be singing from the rooftops. For a good portion of my career I covered the entertainment industry and c…
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…k international connections are reluctant to advocate political reform because they have nowhere to turn for help in case of state persecution; some of these welcome the patronage of politicians. Others still refuse to buy into the dualism of sacred versus secular, preferring instead to see God as fully invested in humanity’s full experience—these consider democracy an arena in which they can be the salt of the earth and light to the world and the…
Read More…their LGBT children. Its president, Deb Word, and her husband run a safe house for LGBT youth in Memphis. The World Meeting’s director of programming, Mary Beth Yount, told Word that the group couldn’t advertise at the event because it isn’t welcoming of parents who disapprove of their children’s same-sex behavior, the National Catholic Reporter wrote. Word noted to Yount that several other bishops have met with and supported similar parent groups…
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…n’s Russia, or God knows how many others. One example most worth noting is Guatemala’s civil war, where wealthy evangelicals have engaged in brutal sectarian repression against poor Catholics in the name of protecting Christian values from Communist threats. That same protection, complete with bloody, strong-arm repression, is, according to historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, what Trump explicitly promises his Christian nationalist base. Given what could be…
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…s them for you, which is why it’s okay that he doesn’t care about you. Because clearly he does; he hits them for you. “Funny” because it’s true. I’ve seen it happen before, and I thought I’d see it again in Vegas, made plans to travel. Then I heard “heat advisory,” and I remembered a Trump rally I’d reported back in 2016, Arizona, hours in line, no shade, no water, sweat dripping, seniors wilting into ambulances, an old woman pulled away in what l…
Read More…m antagonistic to communion (or Episcopalians). I don’t take communion because this ritual act of belonging is not mine because I do not, properly, belong. Why does McCain choose not to belong where he claims to belong? If these rituals are not McCain’s, which are? Are his prayers Nicene still? Were they ever? McCain’s acts of faith requires a return to requisite high school ritual. Or, as he would have it, a return to Hanoi. Words of faith For mo…
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…tright encouraged cadets to profile Black and Latino communities, they did use thinly veiled, coded language to do just that. In a tactical class at one academy, for example, instructors suggested that although cadets might not need to frisk a mother crossing the street with her kids, they should frisk a man wearing all red in the Southeastern part of the city (where most of the city’s Black and Latino population lived). Instructors often encourag…
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…for eternity.” RB: This line of questioning does, in fact, get us into the uses—and misuses—of history (which, I suppose, brings up Jeff’s use of Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney as “fundamentalist” precursors). More to Evan’s point, however, the widespread acceptance of the abortion myth tends, falsely, to skew the analysis of the religious right along a political axis. If you look at the true origins of the movement, on the other hand, it bec…
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…sociation that many non-Catholics would be “eager” to follow these ethical codes because they “pertain not merely to Catholic teaching but also to moral law.” The 1942 NFCPG resolution also declared that abortion and contraception were an affront, not just to the Catholic, but to the American family. “Sound morality as well as sound patriotism demand the protection of the family and family fertility and the human life stream as fundamental to nati…
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…that Deputy Health Minister Hamis Kingwangala “ordered three men who he accuses of being gay to report to police for questioning—or risk arrest.” Same-sex sexual activity is forbidden and punishable by life imprisonment under a section of the criminal code forbidding “offences against morality.” South Korea: Activists denounce LGBT-free education guidelines LGBT equality activists called on the Education Ministry to do away with new sex education…
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