Religion Dispatches
…tions of the president. Last year, he came under fire for meeting with the American Bible Society president “to begin a dialogue on the importance of the Bible in the founding of the country.” In 2010, the White House refused to comment on DuBois’ phone call to religious right ideologue David Jeremiah after the latter called the president “a dangerous person” moving the country toward “socialism.” It was obviously an incident the White House would…
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…ump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.” That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration. B…
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…m. It was the perfect target. A small Jewish cultural center staffed by an American-Israeli Rabbi and his wife, both of whom were killed, was also singled out. This indicates a transnational orientation. Mumbai does have a small Jewish community, but the center served a Jewish tourist community. It was a symbolic target because in South Asia and elsewhere in the Muslim world, “Jews” and the religion of Judaism are routinely implicated in complex,…
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…sformation” of the Catholic Church that is under way, “a decisive shift in numbers towards the Global South—to Asia, Africa and Latin America.” A century ago, he says, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics were in Europe, but by the middle of this century that number will fall “to perhaps a sixth.” Geography is not destiny, but it is only natural that prelates from one part of the world will tend to speak for the traditions with which they are most…
Read More…ol uniforms held their parents’ hands. A host of chatty young nuns tucked iPhones into the pockets of their steely gray habits. Absolutely no protest signs were allowed, yet church groups with people who spoke Spanish sported bright T-shirts with slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were perm…
Read More…er” taps into a huge reservoir of feeling deeply buried inside millions of American voters. And those feelings run so deep precisely because they are inextricably linked to values. “No Surrender” is not a sensible basis for making policy. But it is a powerful expression of a whole web of values that many Americans cling to for dear life, at a time when they feel that the world around them is swirling faster and faster, moving closer and closer to…
Read More…a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder killed Till…
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…h for his reformation. Popular Christian piety contributes to the problem. American Protestant Christianity emphasizes a quick and easy forgiveness: tell Jesus you’re sorry, and you’re forgiven. Not only are you forgiven, your sins now stand “as far as the east is from the west.” That’s good news, and I believe it, but it has nothing to do with one’s qualification to hold moral responsibility in an institution. God may forgive a person, and so may…
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…about the case over the years. “[…] Chen is not the kind of activist that American authorities would have wanted to help,” claimed Julio Severo a blogger for LifeSite, “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are shamelessly pro-abortion, while Chen is pro-life.” Matthew Cullinan Hoffman alleged in a LifeSite op-ed that the Obama administration would rather see Chen disappear. Like many anti-abortion activists, Hoffman maintains that the Obama administr…
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…r relate to. We’ve lost the ability to help weave them back together. This American life, where democracy apparently means that everyone can own their own weapon of mass destruction, is one place where it feels like double death itself is doubling. We are unequipped—socially, politically, intellectually, psychologically, spiritually—to cope with death on this scale. I believe that one of the reasons why we’re so unequipped to do this is because so…
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