Religion Dispatches
…movement challenged the Catholic Church’s role in AIDS/HIV politics in the United States; in doing so, they challenged, as well, who “owned” the Church. As one organizer argues in the film (and here I paraphrase): “THEY are not the Church. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the…
Read More
…man history. But Faust and Manning bury in the footnotes the fact that the United States is the only member of the United Nations that has not ratified the Convention, which is due to lobbying by evangelicals led by homeschool leader Michael Farris (the godfather of the parental rights movement). Evangelicals incorrectly believe the Convention is a threat to parental rights, even though it explicitly affirms parental rights, declaring family is “t…
Read More
…for migrants either as a personal interest of Pope Francis or as part of a numbers game discounts the moral and religious reasons behind the Catholic Church’s actions. Also implicit in the latter explanation is the misperception, common to many American observers, that the United States is at the center of the church’s concerns. In reality, the Catholic Church’s interest in immigration ranges far beyond the Latino and Asian immigrants bolstering t…
Read More
…more effective if it were honest. And perhaps that would have lessened the number of death threats and other vile correspondences she has received. Second, others have said that she deserved the criticism for its political harm, that this hurts the Democratic party. Perhaps, but that doesn’t make much sense either, because the manufactured outrage made it worse. If a Democratic leader had privately contacted her and said, “Ilhan, you have to clari…
Read More
…the real journey is one of self-discovery. The religious landscape of the United States has profoundly changed since the genesis of the Grateful Dead 50 years ago, especially in terms of the dramatic rise of the number of Americans who are no longer affiliated with traditional religious institutions or denominations. In the absence of traditional religious affiliation, people are increasingly turning to popular culture to explore and interrogate…
Read More
…s noteworthy for affirming a positive “Right to a Religion”—in contrast to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, the standard in accepted international instruments. Here again, the Declaration cites the UDHR but omits its crucial inclusion of the “freedom to change” belief and highlights “the right of parents to guide the moral and religious education of their children.” Thus, it exemplifies one conservative response to the challenge of ch…
Read More…is a “leading force for shared ecumenical witness among Christians in the United States,” and that its “37 member communions — from a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, historic African American and Living Peace churches,” represent 45 million Americans. It’s hard to imagine a more sharply defined divide between these two groups. CUFI supports sanctions against Iran, not what it calls a “sham agreement allows Iran to ob…
Read More
…their less happy circumstances. In Western societies like Britain and the United States, the affluence of the powerful few, uninterested with religion as they happily are, shapes the norms of religious participation for the society as a whole. The effect is to minimize the role of religion as a social balm. That is, the United Kingdom, among the ten least religious nations in Diener’s study, is pretty much all out of opiates. Those who have don’t…
Read More…pping point on the way to hoped-for resettlement in Europe, Canada, or the United States. Said one transgender woman, “No reason in this life will make me think to go back to Syria, whether there is war or not. My problem is not just the war.” Another Syrian, Sami, supports himself and his friends through sex work. Like many other Syrian LGBTs, Sami is waiting for his resettlement case to be processed. In the meantime, Saturday nights are his live…
Read More…ks for the full inclusion of LGBT people into the UMC: “We grieve that the United Methodist Church really had the opportunity to live into inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ and live into its tagline of Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds and extend its welcome to LGBT people and unfortunately, chose not to do that. We grieve that UMC continues to harm and discrimination against LGBT people. We’re already here in the United Methodist Church and we w…
Read More