Religion Dispatches
…of Washington National Cathedral, the seat of the Episcopal Church and the site of many presidential funerals and major national interfaith gatherings. The Episcopal Church, a small but prominent Protestant denomination, has been generally in favor of gay equality for years but the Cathedral leadership has been raising the bar in the last few months. It’s not that religious groups haven’t been part of celebrations before – it’s that gay-affirming…
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…’ employer-sponsored benefits. Comparing modern corporations that offer on-site benefits such as health and wellness centers, daycare facilities, and kitchens to the now-defunct company town model, Lambert explains that in some ways, little has changed in terms of workplace spirituality over the past century. Corporate poet David Whyte can make a living traveling between offices to recite his verses, and workplace chaplains and life coaches can co…
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…logical was indeed political. Ruether located reproductive politics as the site of modern-day tensions between the Catholic Church and gender-marginalized people. The liberative spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) transformed public life for American Catholics, energizing both clergy and laypeople to engage in social activism. Some Catholics viewed the push to repeal abortion laws—emerging from the second-wave feminist movement—as a p…
Read More…llness. In fact, this is not a new statement. The brochure, on the APA Web site, was written in 2008. This is not “news” but just another canard pulled from the bottom of a dwindling bag of tricks the religious right is using in a desperate attempt to stem the tide of gay rights victories in the past few months. What’s also interesting is the end of the sentence that the news sites conveniently snipped: “most people experience little or no sense o…
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…Packer’s talk, the Salt Lake Tribune ran the following headline on its Web site: “Apostle: Same-sex attraction can change.” It’s bad enough when Church members are boxed into a corner and obligated by their faith to deny their own sense of reality, but in an age when communication is nearly instantaneous (and when the Church is still struggling with the fallout from its support of Prop. 8 in California), headlines like these threaten to undermine…
Read More…e headlines from the centrist and mightily influential Washington Post Web site: “Wright Stirs Race Controversy,” “Wright Could Spell Doom for Obama,” “Obama’s Latest Test in a Long Line.”) The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. thundered from the pulpit against the white American penchant for turning difference into deficiency and denying the value of diversity. He expressed full understanding of the anger that fueled the cry for Black Power, though…
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…, he reports, had been recommended for his job by senior Nixon White House officials who had known him when he worked in Naval intelligence prior to becoming a reporter. In that capacity, which Woodward denies he held, he was a frequent visitor to the White House. The Saudi Royal Family: Baker details the Bush family’s personal, political, and business connections to the Saudi royal family; and to apparent international slush funds and money-laund…
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…tion, blessing, and miracles,” declared Kolenda in his daily blog from the site. Yet northern Uganda, as the rest of the country, is predominantly Christian (85%), with churches of all denominations full to overflowing. The first missionaries arrived in the region at the beginning of the twentieth century and, by the 1940s, local converts were serving as key agents in the East African Revival movement. So was the implication that they had been ine…
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…ealization that fireworks significantly raise air pollution levels has led officials in Beijing to call for a reduction in the use of pyrotechnics during the Chinese New Year period, and it’s one reason, among others, that Abu Dhabi police have warned Eid celebrants not to use illegal fireworks in the United Arab Emirates. Even in the United States, some critics have called for the federal government to regulate fireworks, rather than exempting th…
Read More…in the dessert, coincidentally right there in Makkah so we can visit this site on our pilgrimage. Of course it wasn’t Makkah yet, but that’s another story. Now, here’s my favorite part. Hajar asks her baby daddy, well what will we do out here in the desert? And he looks and away, “God will provide.” Well thank you very much, old man—that’s just what I will do then, rely on God. So he walks off and leaves them; leaves a woman and her child, his ch…
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