Religion Dispatches
…f Temple Square and cross the street to the sparkling new LDS Church-owned City Creek Mall, a 23-acre, 700,000-square foot shopping center, opened in March. The Temple Square-end of the City Creek Mall features luxury high-rise condominiums and upscale shops like Tiffany’sand Nordstrom’s. Many LDS people view the City Creek Mall as an emblem of savvy financial stewardship, a sure-to-be-profitable $1.5 billion investment designed to revitalize Salt…
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…zusa Street is little more than a brick-lined pedestrian alley in downtown Los Angeles, across the street from a bank and a cell phone store and a block away from a Little Tokyo walking mall. But up on a streetlight at the alley’s entrance, a city historical marker is tacked: Azusa St. Mission… Cradle of the Worldwide Pentecostal Movement. For some, this is sacred ground: the place where the Azusa Street Revival, the founding moment of the modern…
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…uthern and Eastern European immigrants brought a Catholicism that ties the city with New York City and Boston as per capita the most Catholic in the country; how the Great Migration of African Americans brought new faith traditions; how it became home to one of the largest urban Jewish communities; and how Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists have added to the region’s spiritual diversity. Something else cuts across denominational lines, however, becaus…
Read More…ent, but rather focuses on another problematic course of behavior from the city of East Lansing. The direct communication between city officials and the Tennes family was unwise, if not illegal. It created a paper trail strongly suggesting the city’s motive for denying Country Mill Farms’ application for the farmers market was based on the city’s dislike of a practice that the Tennes family claimed was central to their faith. The timing of the cit…
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…n in apparitions—continues to hover over marches for immigration rights in Los Angeles. No one is shouting the name of Adele Brise in the face of brutal oppression, as they once called “¡Viva Romero!” Lewis Wallace quotes one of the shrine-keepers in Champion, who clearly understands why Our Lady of Good Hope has won episcopal support and the tacit approval of the Vatican: “A lot of people say well, why do you think it happened now? Well, every ap…
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…r of Muslims, but it was New York that did that. The city of my birth, the city under attack, was also the city that refused to retreat into cowardice. I have nearly a dozen stories of people who said to me, in either words or deeds, that if you are a New Yorker, it does not matter your faith; come and grieve with us. I traveled the country giving talks about Muslims after 9/11, but the safest, warmest, and most trusting I ever felt was in New Yor…
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…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…
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…lism, yet know so little of its origins. While writing the book, I went to Los Angeles a couple of times and stayed downtown right near Azusa Street, which is considered the birthplace of the movement. Twice a day, I’d walk by the little plaque that marks the spot where the spirit allegedly came to William J. Seymour and his congregation in 1906. Part of me was wondering if some divine inspiration might come my way, but mostly I was hoping to find…
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…LGBT people, including warnings by police in the country’s second-largest city to leave the city: Homosexuality was decriminalised in Azerbaijan in 2000. However, public attitudes have yet to change: LGBT people remain largely defenceless against hate crimes and hate speech. In January 2014, Isa Shahmarli, founder of the Azad LGBT network, took his own life by hanging himself with a rainbow flag. In his final note, the prominent activist blamed s…
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…the church have accused Samuel of sexually assaulting minors. In 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported that four people had filed accusations against Samuel with the prosecutor’s office in Guadalajara. The Times also spoke with a young man who, after going public with allegations against Samuel, was kidnapped and slashed 57 times with a knife. LLDM authorities have denied any involvement in these assaults, of course. At the time, much of the negati…
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