Religion Dispatches
…and by that article, and know that if we had usury laws based on the Biblical ideals, the sorts of super-leveraged financial instruments that caused the 2008 crash would never have been legal in the first place. My point here, though, is somewhat different. Because, as my conservative friend implied, usury is not just a musty Biblical sin, but a charge specifically levied against Jews. There was a clear historical reason for this: the medieval ch…
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…, What Would Jesus Do Now?, at a moment in American history when presidential calls for greater tax equity must contend with the dystopian “class warfare” fears of Tea Partiers and other Republicans? When the number of Americans living in poverty—46.2 million, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau—is at an all-time high? When more than 300,000 Christian churches dot the American landscape, the majority with declining membership and l…
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…FAMiLY” (emphases in original). The pledge features some typical evangelical talking points like marital fidelity, “faithful constitutionalist” judges, no redefinition of the institution of marriage, and welfare reform, as well as a call to reject shari’ah law. But nestled amongst this litany is a point that calls for protection of women and children from “human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography…
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…rganization for Marriage’s Cultural Director Thomas Peters posted to National Review Online a joyous post declaring “Gay Marriage Defeated” and boasting about the coalition that had defeated marriage equality in New York. Strangely enough, no news outlets were reporting the defeat of marriage equality. A few hours after NOM’s claim, CBS news reported that negotiations over the scope of the religious exemption—reportedly the sticking point for a nu…
Read More…suggest the Women2Drive movement has quiet support among Saudi royalty. Manal Al-Sharif, the 32-year-old computer consultant who spent 10 days in jail in May after publishing a YouTube video of herself at the wheel filmed by Saudi feminist Wajida Al-Huwaider, did not drive. Nor was she able to talk to the media about driving. But her Twitter account (@manal-alsharif) was busy today with brief replies to supporters of the campaign. The Women2Drive…
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…lles penis after another, probably online in covert caughtness. The women will still bear the letter “A” on their breasts, and the men will just bore us. Imagine, instead, how wonderful it would be if we could all be queer, even the Weiners of the world. Queer? Isn’t that a bad word? Nope. It just means a way of transcending gender, loving sex, enjoying the erotic. Very few Sunday Schools are teaching it yet. Since the systems that teach us how to…
Read More…tdoor anti-abortion rally boasting such names as Robertson and the Rev. Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association. Tomorrow’s rally is expected to mark Operation Rescue’s bow out of Wichita and the handing over of its “Summer of Mercy” to local leadership. “It’s a wildfire,” said Hope for the Heartland spokeswoman Mary Wilkinson. She said local anti-abortion forces were getting ready for an education and legislative campaign in the c…
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…proud of, like Mark Twain, Elie Wiesel, Zora Neale Hurston. So, in the final analysis, I don’t think Meador does justice to the compelling paradox explored in my book. What he does, unwittingly, is confirm one of my central contentions: that people generally lack the cognitive receptor to recognize misotheism as the third stance beyond piety and atheism. Many people want to live with the comforting myth of such a simple dichotomy: people either a…
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…ton Post reports, “far-right Christian activists” affiliated with the General Alliance Against Racism and for the Respect of the French and Christian Identity are “taking the Collection Lambert to court… to try to have the crucifix photograph removed from the exhibit.” The group claims the image “insults and injures Christians at the heart of their faith.” Such outraged, even violent, reactions to the photo challenge Eric Felten’s claim, in the Wa…
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…ew Mother Earth law did not, however, result from indigenous Andean spirituality alone. They were also influenced by a generation of thinking and debate around the world about human responsibilities toward nature. In the U.S., much of this has taken place among philosophers and legal theorists, including in the landmark argument by Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?: Law, Morality, and the Environment, which was first published in the…
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