Religion Dispatches
…the Affordable Care Act. Rep. Darrel Issa said that the hymn singing was a sign of the caucus’s solidarity in standing up to what Rep. Tim Huelskamp derisively called “the Senate Surrender Caucus.” That opposition to compromise was also a theme of the Christian conservatives who gathered in Washington over the weekend for the Values Voter Summit, the annual political conference sponsored by the Family Research Council, the American Family Associat…
Read More…te anti-gay messages. Childers said that he was once one of the people who promoted anti-gay messages. “I am thankful that I was allowed to be liberated from that prejudice,” he said. He urged pastors who are asked to partner with the organizations attending the Values Voter Summit not to “make a mockery of their faith” by embracing the harm those groups cause. NALT co-founders John and Catherine Shore spoke about leaving their first church home w…
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…by Eucharist—is this interview simply a puff piece, a case of the Jesuits promoting their own and their own promoting Jesuits? Is it meant as a way to attract people back to a church that may have a kinder face but just as steely a heart? Is the good will it has engendered trustworthy? The Roman Catholic Church has been around for several thousand years for a reason. I hope this interview is a beginning not an end of a new moment. These serious…
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…ode of “religion” with those of other bodies of/in evidence seems to me to signal other means by which “religion” takes shape in the public imagination, and by which it both performs and flouts convention. Religion and the state co-emerge in discourses about American responsibility and Syrian chaos, together standing for the violence of ontological breakings into and breakings down of the “communal World” as it appears to custom, and figuring equa…
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…ism, since the goal is to come up with the most robust examination of the “signs of the times.” This analysis is a necessary, feet-on-the-ground precondition for deep reflection in the light of Christian resources in a see-judge-act spiral that led to faith-informed actions to address injustices, even if through small grassroots practices. By contrast, Francis seems to think of poverty primarily as a virtue, as a marker of service, frugality, hone…
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…. NRCAT offers practical tools for ending torture in US Prisons, including signing the national statement against prolonged solitary confinement. NRCAT and AFSC, as part of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, are also in the process of releasing a letter for religious leaders to sign that is addressed to Governor Brown calling on him to honor the five core demands of the hunger strikers. Why should religious communities stand in solid…
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…aks my heart. I am not ‘out’ where I teach; although I was not required to sign any document about my sexuality, it is not safe for me to be open. Am I the sole gay faculty at a Christian college? No, I am not. There are others. Someday, given the movement in the wider culture on LGBT issues, I think some Christian colleges will change and will welcome openly LGBT faculty, but for now, Christian colleges and Boy Scouts are running neck and neck in…
Read More…same-sex marriage. The bill now moves to the floor of the House. The state Senate passed the bill on Valentine’s Day and Gov. Pat Quinn is ready to sign it into law. See a synopsis of the hearing from Windy City Media….
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…inst Iran’s nuclear facilities has the pundits wondering if this a further signal of Israel’s intention to bomb Iran, or yet another bluff in a campaign to get the West to further tighten sanctions on Tehran. The Israeli government, in this view, has no intention of attacking Iran and starting another Middle East war, but it is willing to go to the brink to get the U.S. to act—and to act before the November elections. The Rabbinic consultation st…
Read More…uschwitz. First, in the name of optimism, let’s point out that it’s a good sign that we live in an age when the pope is expected to make a statement like the one B16 made today: The memory of this immense tragedy, which above all struck so harshly the Jewish people, must represent for everyone a constant warning so that the horrors of the past are not repeated, so that every form of hatred and racism is overcome, and that respect for, and dignity…
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