Religion Dispatches
…other sexually transmitted infections than is an exclusive focus on condom promotion. Regrettably, however, many scientists, HIV prevention educators, and AIDS activists are so fixed on condom promotion that they do not give due attention to the risk avoidance that is possible to achieve through abstinence outside marriage and mutual, lifelong fidelity within marriage.” Who, one asks, are these scientists who believe in the “exclusive focus on con…
Read More
…f Spiritual Progressives ran a full page ad in the New York Times. The ad, signed by Dr. Cornel West, Sister Joan Chittister, and 2800 others, urges President-Elect Obama to: 1.) Call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza when he is sworn in as president, and 2.) Convene an International Peace Conference to resolve the Israel/Palestine struggle. He now seeks to have that ad republished in the Washington Post and other media. You can read, sign and/o…
Read More
…s approval ratings were in permanent free fall, his nefarious theocratic designs evidently vanquished. In that climate, Roose found ready at hand the language for common ground and the gradient of hope. Sound familiar? A New Era of Responsibility Throughout Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and into his administration, he has tried to work his words around the culture wars. He speaks of “abortion reduction” rather than “choice” or “life.” A sup…
Read More
…perverse dreams, both equally doomed, offer an inkling of hope that there is enough common ground between the apex of American power and the popular expressions of its terrorist enemies that the two might someday graze together, like Isaiah’s wolves and lambs. It is, backhandedly, the sign that a more patient dialogue, over years of inevitable sacrifice and setback on all sides, might finally be fruitful, uncovering a world everyone can stand to…
Read More
…ing rose petals at you all day. And when a teacher loses his bearings, the signs are hard to miss. As Tamm grew up and witnessed the guru’s increasingly erratic posturing (elaborate weightlifting hoaxes and an underground zoo of exotic animals were among his most bewildering experiments), she began to question the idea of devotion to a guru. After a number of attempts to leave, she broke free of the group at age twenty-five. I recently caught up w…
Read More
…ce members were often not Christians and rejection could be interpreted as sign of authenticity. I’ve never attended a Christian metal or punk show, although I saw Danielson Famile, who could be described as Christian indie rock, at a music festival. You talk a lot about the authority Christians have given to rock musicians, and how in turn, they wish to co-opt or reclaim that power for their own spiritual message. Didn’t Christians, at least in p…
Read More
…t have allowed palliative sedation death to occur,” he said. That may be a sign that even the strictest of religious traditions have a tendency to shift with time, and as our culture changes. Like Niedzielski’s friends, people who claim intense faith and adherence to a certain doctrine may likely reconsider those beliefs as technology advances and its use becomes accepted in everyday life, Campbell said. Even if official church policies don’t chan…
Read More
…“Send your congratulations to Benjamin Netanyahu.” It asked supporters to “Sign the letter of congratulations to Prime Minister Netanyahu,” and Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, pledged that he would “personally present it to him.” In a Washington Times op-ed piece dated February 22, Evans talked about meeting a “quiet, almost shy” Netanyahu in 1982, and he writes that he “was so impressed” with him “that the following day I asked Prime…
Read More
…ventually, a federal judge would strike down the teaching of intelligent design as unconstitutional, noting that it was merely revamped creationism. Intelligent design advocacy groups would retreat and lick their wounds only to reemerge, as they have done recently, pushing for new anti-evolution concepts in the public schools under the guise of “strengths and weakness” and “academic freedom” bills. But that would be more than a year away. At the t…
Read More
…tion of the aims and principles of the submission and patriarchy movement. Signers affirm their belief that women and men were designed to reflect God in “complementary and distinct ways”; that today’s culture has gone astray distinctly because of its egalitarian approach to gender (and that it’s “experiencing the consequences of abandoning God’s design for men and women”); and that while men and women are equally valuable in the eyes of God, here…
Read More