Religion Dispatches
…n’t use those on a daily basis. But other things, like toothpaste, I’m not really planning on using a travel size since mine is pretty small anyway. The other things are my medications—the ones I take every day I have to take every day and then pack so I have access to them while in transit but enough supply for three weeks. Things like this make packing not quite final until the last day, and then I’ll be off. I even start wearing clothes I know…
Read More
…ates and could result in a complete takeover if not stopped. What Shari’ah Really Is In an interview with the Center for American Progress, Intisar Rabb, a member of the law faculty at Boston College Law School, explains that: “Shari’ah is the ideal law of God according to Islam… Shari’ah has tremendous diversity, as jurists and learned scholars figure out and articulate what that law is…” In pre-colonial times, Salaymeh added, jurists—legal think…
Read More
…notion that pregnancy is not an illness draws, I daresay uneasily, from a number of sources. There’s the classical notion that a thing’s nature is derived from its purpose, and the purpose of female bodies is to bear children. There’s the persistent early modern fear that women, especially privileged white women, are becoming overcivilized and unnatural, not having as many privileged white babies, relying on technology and pain relief, and not fi…
Read More
…evangelicalism’s “fringe” are now the center of the movement—if they ever really were on the margins at all. And it’s up to a new generation of scholars, journalists, and other observers to document how these communities understand themselves to be evangelical and what that term means to them. There’s a certain irony here, in that an Anglophone movement that once saw itself as uniquely positioned to save the world is now looking to the globe to s…
Read MoreWhile most of us (including your faithful RD staffers) were prepping the grill for a long weekend celebrating this country’s problematic patriotism, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday issued an ominous anti-gay ruling that is positively stunning in its misreading of the legal basis for nationwide marriage equality. The Washington Post‘s Dale Carpenter meticulously catalogued just “how wrong” the court was in its interpretation of the U.S. Supreme…
Read More
Critical Race Theory (CRT), the academic study in which students and scholars examine how race and racism function, is under attack by conservatives who claim that CRT promotes a distorted view of American history through a racial and ideological lens. According to the Washington Post, conservative activists and politicians use the term as a “catchall phrase for nearly any examination of systemic racism in the present.” It’s often “portrayed as t…
Read More…xclusivist this year. But it puts him badly out of touch with the majority of Catholics, mainline and Evangelical Protestants, and most important, the ever-growing ranks of the religiously un-affiliated, who really, really don’t give a damn what faith Bernie Sanders holds or doesn’t hold. Can a man walk into the presidency after pissing off 66% of American religious voters? We may soon find out….
Read More
…nd listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before? … [What millennials really need] from the church is not another yes-man entity enabling my hubris and giving me what I want. Rather, what I need is something bigger than me, older than me, bound by a truth that transcends me and a story that will outlast me; basically, something that doesn’t change to fit me and my whims, but changes me to be the Christ-like person I was created to be.” Althou…
Read More
…ability to reliably take body temperature at the same time every day. So, really, the question is not: “Are there NO couples out there who ever have a positive experience avoiding artificial contraception?” Surely there are. Rather, the question is this: “Can every married couple everywhere really benefit from avoiding artificial contraception—and more to the point, who in the heck could possibly be in the position to know this?” And as I read th…
Read More
…ong to talk about a “debate” over Critical Race Theory. The critics aren’t really debating anything; they’re making assertions. What the assertions and attacks really amount to is that whites and especially white Christians are protecting themselves from the interrogation of a very troubling history, including the history we just talked about. And yes, this idea of protecting American innocence is really at the core of it. And you know there’s a g…
Read More