Religion Dispatches
…stake tensions for incompatibilities or inherent opposition. I know a fair number of African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims who once voted Republican. They no longer do—not because they disagree with the Republican Party, but because they feel it has no room for them. It seems opposed to their presence in America. A good number in the Muslim-majority world feel the same way about the place of Islam in the world: there is no room for it. It isn’…
Read More…ll the same. The clinic nurse I was shadowing that day attributed the high number, at least in part, to truck drivers sitting in their cabs in the gravel lot down the road waiting to clear customs. If we extrapolate that number out to the village as a whole and assume that over one-third of the women in this small town in rural Zambia are HIV-positive, the enormity of the HIV pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa becomes clearer. What intricate, invisibl…
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…jority of young evangelicals support either marriage or civil unions.” The numbers remain in line with other recent polls, like one commissioned by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)—and I’ll admit my friend Debra Haffner has every right to be encouraged by these statistics—but I can’t get over my anger that my life even has to be the subject of constant polling. Why does the temperature of the populace have to be taken about…
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In recent years, a rather animated conversation has been taking place about the apostle Paul. This conversation has largely been between those who identify with what is commonly known as “the New Perspective on Paul,” and those who wish to defend a more traditional understanding of the apostle. I can’t say for sure which side is winning the debate, but some of us who were initially inspired by the New Perspective on Paul have decided that it has…
Read More…en though opposition to same-sex marriage seems to be cooling its heels at number three, it’s presence is still felt in just about all aspects of the “value voters” belief system. With abortion remaining at the number one spot, it’s clear that all things sexual continue to occupy the minds of those who seem the most opposed to anyone actually having sex. It’s interesting to view the “value voter” summit in juxtaposition with a new survey conducted…
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…te boundary. Before secular government enthusiasts get too excited by this number I would point out that, for a fair number of evangelicals, the worry is that the state will interfere with the church, not the other way around. Similarly, a little more than one in four White evangelicals said the federal government should declare Christianity the official religion of the United States. Far more (61%) said that Christianity should not be the officia…
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These days, when ever you say you are Muslim by choice, you get people asking about your conversion. Mostly they want to know why. This curiosity comes equally from those who are already Muslim and those who are not. I used to tell the same basic steps—although I hardly think my own individual door lights up any bulbs of excitement. Maybe because no lightbulbs went off for me either. I was a seeker. I was raised in a loving Christian environment…
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…thored the play Us & Them performed at Mildred’s Umbrella Theatre, wrote a number of pivotal speeches for the Anti Prop. 8 Movement and the popular “It Gets Worse” viral video for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign. Fox optioned his pilot “Yearbook” as part of their Diversity program, his pilot, “rare” (about a family of cannibals who immigrates to America) was brought to HBO by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emily Ziff’s Cooperstown Productions a…
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…to explain the bounty or harmony of the world around us. Given an infinite number of universes, a few of them are bound to be life-friendly at some point, and we’re in one of them. The problem, of course, is that the price of getting rid of God is an infinite number of universes we can’t see. So sober-minded contemporary scientists end up on the same side as (some) theologians in arguing that the multiverse is extravagant, unnecessary, and unscien…
Read More…st only, in most cases, at the mercy of advertising revenues. So while the number of voices has increased, the number of well-funded reporters has decreased. It’s reassuring to think that as print news takes a hit, online media will be there to fill the gap, but the story isn’t quite that simple. Content is certainly being generated, but it’s proving no easy replacement for print. Many publications weren’t initially eager to embrace the online wor…
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