Religion Dispatches
…sy details of sectarian schism), McCain’s terse description of North Phoenix does not supply nearly enough explanation for what is a jolting swap, like trading the Jetta for a Suburban. Yet McCain supplies no wake-up call, no re-awakening of his spirit to explicate his substitution of Sunday affections. He offers no specifications of the kind of Christ that pressed him from a the Book of Common Prayer to the Baptist Faith and Message. Nor, as ment…
Read More…sure that an equal age of consent applies to both same-sex and different-sex sexual activity,” which could be the lead in to overturn Section 377 of the Indian Penal code that still criminalizes consensual same-sex conduct, a remnant from an 1860 British Colonial Era law that exists in many constitutions across the Commonwealth countries even today. Malta: Civil Union & Adoption Law, Trans Protections in Constitution This week the parliament of M…
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…before the State of Israel was established, conservative evangelicals had expressed extreme hostility to Islam, “the imposter religion,” as it was known in some late 19th- and early 20th-century Protestant circles. A century and a half ago Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, spent a few weeks in Jerusalem. He was despondent before the visit, and even more so afterwards. Jerusalem, for Melville, represented the past, not the future. In his journa…
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…—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The kabbalistic literature now so popular in modern Israel is in many ways worse. We have evidence that in the heyday of Safed in the sixteenth century a “council for rectifying sins” (va’ad le tikun avonot) was established to seek out and corporally punish those who wer…
Read More…rence to “religious freedom” from Romney. Insiders know that the latter is code for exempting individuals and institutions from following government mandates on health care and provisions on anti-discrimination. But to the middle, Romney’s comment surely passed under the radar. And as for Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, even Paul Ryan is for that now. All this in the shadow of an unprecedented legal war against women’s reproductive choices, and an ever-morp…
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…ning.” It also allows teachers and school districts to use “supplemental textbooks,” which are just code words for creationist and pro-intelligent design materials. Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, co-founder of Louisiana Citizens for Science and one of the creationist movement’s most damning critics, said she believes the complaints are merely a tactic to get disclaimers (Warning: These books teach evo…
Read More…he gig is up for these folks. They’ve finally realized that no amount of tax or regulation cutting, no amount of abortion or same-sex marriage banning, is going to bring back their jobs. They’re culturally alienated from the Democratic Party, with it’s tilt toward educated, urban elites and people of color. That leaves Trump as their last and best bet. And as the primary contests move into the Rust Belt and Northeast, this Catholic base may turn o…
Read More…own problems for the Mormon public image, a sense of radical disconnection between exterior and interior. And that sense of disconnection, of the public not quite matching the private, is only exacerbated by the insularity of Mormon communities, the secrecy of Mormon temple rites, and the privacy of faith practices like wearing sacred undergarments. Our difference—it’s there—under our clothes, just out of sight. Mormons learn to manage this balanc…
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…Pan Amazon region do not inspire any confidence that this one will be any better, just a scaled-up version of the same. For example, there were high hopes for the Amazonian Synod with a Latin American pope. But the well-documented requests for women to be included in ordained ministry and for married men to be ordained as priests all evaporated when votes were taken and the papal document emerged. What would motivate these people whose hopes were…
Read More…ntended she violated school policy and the American Counseling Association code of ethics. That code, by the way, is clear about what is expected from counselors: Counselors do not condone or engage in discrimination based on age, culture, disability, ethnicity, race, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status/partnership, language preference, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law. Counselors…
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