Religion Dispatches
…the audience is left to make sense of these household portraits that are almo*]}*st boring in their everydayness (except perhaps for the wall-hanging written in Arabic). In the right column is a headshot of Tashfeen Malik in a light peach hijab. To some, the collective assembly of these objects might be interpreted as what terrorism looks like. By that, I do not mean the individual objects themselves; after all, what about the dining table or hanging…
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…e than a dream. My dream condition/wake condition, my condition of being almo*]}*st-sleep/almo*]}*st-woke, spoke something true. It spoke a dream-reality of black church-LGBT solidarity in a shared relation, a genesis shared. This condition awakened me to a dream already testified to: Charleston and Orlando, Emanuel and Pulse, togetherness known through each other. To black Christians I say: you can’t be (rightly) against what happened in Charleston at Em…
Read More…As I write there are 100 more decisions to be made by the decision makers. Most have to do with what the first world polluters will pay in repentance and compensation for warming the planet. They also have to do with gender equality and refugee status. Why omit these matters? Because there is a fantasy we can deal with climate without dealing with it justly. The illegal sit-ins have started and they are imaginative and fierce—insisting that the gl…
Read More…she died, when conservative Catholics in Poland – the home of some of the most repressive abortion laws in the EU, which only allow abortions in the case of danger to the life or health of a pregnant woman, an irreversibly-damaged fetus, or a pregnancy resulting from crime such as rape—heralded Mroz’s decision as “a witness of ‘love, motherhood, the desire to give life and the heroic love for an unborn child.’” Lopez brings the story of Mroz stat…
Read More…ent of same-sex marriage would pass laws that would threaten to jail and/or fine pastors who didn’t perform these unions among a group that accounts for less than 2% of the American population.” As even most marriage equality opponents will acknowledge, this charge is utterly untrue. Which is something that may be said about a lot of anti-equality campaigning in the weeks to come….
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…ube. “There is this stereotype of who we pro-life leaders are, and for the most part it would be white middle-aged religious men trying to impose their will on women,” said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. “So now with Lila, you bring this young, fresh college student that completely blows any stereotypes away. No one is going to accuse Lila of being mean, vindictive, and harsh.” New Media Twist on an Old Strategy “Rose…
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…ve contributed to oppression.” A similar situation happened at Yale just last month when, after pressure from students, the university renamed its Calhoun College due to John C. Calhoun’s support of slavery as a “positive good.” Also last fall at the Jesuit Georgetown, the president made an unprecedented move to atone for the role Georgetown once played in the slave trade by offering preferential status in admissions to descendants of slaves. This…
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…e war in Iraq, set him apart at times from his colleagues and his bishops. Most of his work could be said to be in the Catholic tradition of social justice and there is no doubt that that tradition influenced the Senator and the man. His religion was not, however, worn on his sleeve; he did not ask aloud “what would Jesus do?” nor did he quote any of the 3,000 biblical references to poverty. He grounded his work and commitment in the experience an…
Read More…ar, the calls are few and far between. The New York Times builds its whole story out of a handful of phone calls and an email. But the article indicates that those who run the various nonprofits that help soldiers achieve conscientious objector status expect a floodgate of calls if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is formally repealed. The good news is that the groups don’t think there is legal basis for the claims. In the “don’t ask, don’t tell” cases, Ms. M…
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…church. I miss my friends, but I know this was the right decision. I think most of all, I miss taking communion. I wept quite a bit during communion at the conference hosted by The Reformation Project conference (a group advocating for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church). I’m in the wilderness. I’m spiritually homeless, and I think I’m embracing that. I think a lot about Exodus—leaving Egypt and wandering in the wilderness. There is no te…
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