Religion Dispatches
…on is to ensure safe, legal, and accessible abortion. “Our clinical policy guidelines are evidence-based and set the standard for quality care in North America. These onerous and wide-reaching guidelines from Kansas, on the other hand, aren’t based on evidence and impose unnecessary and unreasonable rules—like dictating room temperature and the size of the janitorial closets—that are clearly just there to make it more difficult for abortion provid…
Read More…n to care for the poor, as well as the essential role of government in the common good, is under massive attack. In Commonweal, Peter Steinfels zeroes in on the nearly 30 million men and women—a third of all the Catholics in the country—who have left the Church. As Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton, predicted in the piece that Ronan cited: “A new Republican majority in the house, led by a Catholi…
Read More…lose with American Christian Zionists — it’s with them he says he shares a common bond. He was Sarah Palin’s Israeli tour guide when she visited earlier this spring; he speaks to American religious right gatherings about how “Christians and Jews share the same future.” Danon has likened Obama to Pharaoh, a bit of religious imagery that turns irony on its head as he portrays any even tepid effort to change the terms of Israel’s brutal occupation of…
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…ions class is unlike anything offered at secular law schools, its purpose being to guide students toward a “Christian worldview” of the law. In the 2008-09 academic year, the required texts included David Barton’s Original Intent, which Barton’s website describes as “essential resource for anyone interested in our nation’s religious heritage and the Founders’ intended role for the American judicial system,” and Francis Schaeffer’s Christian Manife…
Read More…independent (the Constitution Party?). Angle has not been just sitting around since last fall. She has been out and about in early presidential primary states (South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa) promoting a creationist film called The Genesis Code, and holding fundraising receptions. The moralistic film follows an unbelieving hockey player and a Christian journalism student who struggle with “reconciling their scientific studies and what’s…
Read More…010 video, Levesque noted that “God has given us a purposeful ambiguity around” the Antichrist, yet proceeded to offer what he apparently believes is evidence that Obama might be it — or at least anti-Christian, or Antichrist-ish. Levesque claimed Obama “twist[s] the word of God” and “the Antichrist Quotient goes up above and beyond for someone who would so blatantly attack the word of God.” He added, “This man offends me, this man offends my God….
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…m Judaism recently announced that Rabbi Rick Jacobs will be nominated to become its next president, a tremendously challenging position given the ideological, demographic, financial, and organizational difficulties that the movement faces. Since this is a subject that is developing as we speak, I hope many people—including some of your readers—can help me with ideas and feedback. Right now I’m trying to come up with what to call the new book. If a…
Read More…es public, keeping the powerful from locking down the present moment, not being bought off by economic fulfillment or empty words about union-busting and give-aways to well-heeled interests being technical adjustments necessary to manage a desperate fiscal situation. To my mind, this fresh sense of possibility and the new participation of average citizens in determining their own future offers a tantalizing glimpse of the work of the God of Exodus…
Read More…law a suite of immigration reform measures that would make it possible for undocumented residents to obtain a permit to work in the state of Utah by paying a fine and undergoing a criminal background check. The package includes elements that displease both the opponents of illegal immigration and strongest advocates of immigrant labor—including HB 497, which allows law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of individuals arrested f…
Read More…ts. The report surveys social scientific studies to present broad-based evidence of the complexity and varied character of the processes by which a person becomes a terrorist, concluding that such persons are commonly only marginally “religious.” Available research indicates that what law enforcement often frames as a “conveyer belt” toward radicalization is anything but a linear, one-dimensional process (if it can even be described as “a process….
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