Religion Dispatches
…mployed workers for every new job opening. And as of last month the actual number of workers in crisis is not the 14 million who are officially unemployed (as if that number were acceptable), but more like 29 million people, if you count people no longer looking or working at sharply reduced hours or taking big pay and benefit cuts. That is 18 percent of the total workforce and still rising. What’s more, three-fourths of those losing work over the…
Read More…synod in Articles IX and X: In choosing those who are to represent the episcopal Conferences of one or a number of nations and the religious institutes in the Synod of Bishops, great attention should be paid not just to the general knowledge and wisdom of individuals, but also to their theoretical and practical knowledge of the matter which the Synod is to take up. The Supreme Pontiff may, if he so chooses, increase the number of members of the S…
Read More
…ersity campuses. Reacting to the formation of a student-run group that led scholarly discussions on gender and sexuality at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Nasir proclaimed that such groups were not “in accordance with the values and morals of Indonesia.” Within weeks, statements ranging from the absurd to the apocalyptic echoed through Indonesia’s media. At a maternal health seminar, a mayor warned young mothers to teach their children ho…
Read More
…office in Hong Kong and Macao urged Hong Kong to enact laws against LGBT discrimination, while a scholar at the University of Hong Kong suggested that including religious exemptions in the ordinance could allow the LGBT community to reconcile with Catholic and Protestant churches that have resisted anti-discrimination laws. Germany: LGBT inclusion in school curricula met with backlash The Guardian reports on the expansion of LGBT inclusion in Germ…
Read More
…ave of working-class religious resistance. Many Catholics stopped their subscriptions to the archdiocesan newspaper out of frustration with the editor’s refusal to side more decisively with the American Railway Union. At churches across the city’s South Side, meanwhile, Protestant churchgoers rose up against “scab ministers.” Nowhere was the backlash more severe than at Pullman Presbyterian Church. When the minister there railed against the strike…
Read More
…people are by intensity, measured with the simple hack of subtracting the number of people Strongly Opposed to same-sex marriage from the number Strongly In Favor. Not surprisingly, since the Unitarian-Universalists only had 6 percent opposed, their position on the chart hardly budged at all. Other groups traveled a little more. Mainline Baptists, for example, strongly disapprove just a little more than they strongly approve. Evangelical Baptists…
Read More…t occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, 40 years ago on November 18, 1978. STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination) published a four-part series that presents its best evidence for asserting that those deaths were mass murder rather than collective suicide, as initially reported in the news media. While Scientology may have a stake in how this story is told, the series actually raises two important questions. First, how in fact did the…
Read More
…ay from belief is merely the problematic influence of people of European descent. This is brought home through the portrayal of uncle Johan, who apes assumed European preferences related to food, drink, culture—and atheism. While this makes for a laugh, it does the diversity of African American communities a disservice and fails to consider why a growing number are shifting away from belief— a shift that is tied to a long history of African Americ…
Read More
…te people can live in the cities… that only white children can go to white schools… and it’s just as wrong.” While I do not doubt that there are certain similarities between apartheid (as well as US segregation) and the exclusion of women from Roman Catholic ordination, and while I can believe that Fresen’s feelings about these two injustices are similar, it is not ethically acceptable to say that they are “just the same.” Candor requires me to ad…
Read More
…the 2011 census, it emerged that 84% of the people of the Irish Republic described themselves as “Roman Catholic”. The number of atheists and agnostics and diverse other faiths was up too, but Roman Catholics remained the majority. However, it is evident, especially in Dublin, that nominal inscription to a religion is one thing, while actual practice is another. Red C’s survey only confirms what is obvious anecdotally: that a substantial number of…
Read More