Religion Dispatches
…. Am I the sole gay faculty at a Christian college? No, I am not. There are others. Someday, given the movement in the wider culture on LGBT issues, I think some Christian colleges will change and will welcome openly LGBT faculty, but for now, Christian colleges and Boy Scouts are running neck and neck in the race to avoid change….
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…ivists in the Netherlands and the Dutch Caribbean alike are hopeful that a change in Aruba, the largest and most significant of the overseas territories, could instigate change in Curaçao and Sint Maarten. The legalization of civil partnerships there would mean all Dutch citizens would have equal rights regardless of their sexual preferences. Ireland: Former president criticizes Catholic teaching on homosexuality Former President Mary McAleese, wh…
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…ma campaign to the Obama presidency. The campaign talked about fundamental change, change many read as social transformation. The presidency now demonstrates the difficulty of making change from the center, from the position of power. Obama will do good; many aspects of justice-seeking will be better. But social transformation, real change in power and privilege, never happens at the center; it occurs at the margins. It is the prophet crying in th…
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…er, not for the majority. It is going to keep getting worse until the game changes, and the game can change in only one of two basic ways. Either it can change peacefully and intelligently, with lots of arguments and a little fun, or it can change calamitously and stupidly, with no arguments and nothing even close to fun. Lunatic fringe stuff, right? But consider this: if Communist China could turn into a capitalist powerhouse seemingly overnight…
Read More…en be the majority, but actually it is changing. Those who are part of the change, or at the very least, interested in the change, form a different kind of relationship with it as a whole. Of course, work on Islam and gender falls into this category of progressive. Maybe for no other reason than the idea of gender as an arena of discourse, or part of identity, is a new. Sure, lots of people want to return us to the old patriarchal constructions of…
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…rch This is the context that has prompted so many evangelicals of color to change course. But not everyone is leaving. As a growing number of minorities redefine their associations, many have chosen to see white evangelical spaces as their “mission field,” but not their source of spiritual nourishment. These days, SueAnn Shiah just gets angry during church sermons. Still, the Taiwanese American congregant at a conservative, white church in Nashvil…
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…o on the Internet and access to all kinds of information. This is going to change everything. Which do you think will be more likely: a shift from religiosity to atheism, or a change within religious groups towards more liberal interpretation of scripture? I don’t see how the traditional credal models of religion are going to be able to withstand this sort of epistemological pressure. I think that we see trends even in traditional evangelical chur…
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…rites, “reflects an evolution of the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage.” This is an important move on Judge Walker’s part, since those opposed to same-sex marriage accuse gays and lesbians of wanting a “change in marriage.” Instead, Walker’s decision is a complete refutation of the stereotypes (both social and religious) that the gay and lesbian community has had to labor under for decades. Instead of seeking a “a new right,…
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…stants worry so intensely about the state legalizing same-sex marriage. To change marriage law is, for these protestants, to change marital theology. So the AFA works to make its theological vision of marriage compelling to the Supreme Court, not only through the much-discussed language of religious freedom, but by appeals to the rhetoric of democracy and, as the ad says, at “the expense of children, perhaps even civilization itself…” While it isn…
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…eeds to be done pastorally and argue the details later. This is how social change happens. Laws are made and changed in response to already existing situations, not to fantasies. There are plenty of differences between these two cases. Those who promote women in combat probably do not want to change the fundamental nature of the military. Women priests already exist through ordination processes that parallel the official one, and plenty of Catholi…
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