Religion Dispatches
…a Christian radio station is involved, lucky radio callers generally land tickets to a concert, sporting event, or perhaps a trip to be “pampered” at one of the popular vacation destinations (Cancun, Disneyland, Las Vegas, etc). Speaking of Christian radio, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bib…
Read More
…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…
Read More
…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
Read More
…to get more upset about these things until I realized a couple of things. Number one, not everyone’s going to like you. Number two, engaging with these people in arguments is often fruitless. Number three, a lot of times they refuse to listen. And number four, a very small percentage of them are actually crazy. There’s a great scene in a movie called The Trouble with Angels from the 1960s. It’s about a Catholic girls’ school outside of Philadelph…
Read More
…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
Read More…alt Lake Tribune reported that Mormon missionaries in San Jose, Dallas and Denver are doing less tracting-going door to door in search of people to teach-and more service. The change began three years ago, when “San Jose leaders proposed that missionaries provide two hours of nonproselytizing community service every day, five days a week—up from the normal four or so hours a week. Missionaries are expected to find their own service opp…
Read More
…and HIV as twinned issues in, for example, your 2010 book Names, Not Just Numbers: Facing Global Aids and World Hunger. I have to admit I love the title and its humane thrust. What do you see as the core reasons these issues are related? I already touched on this in response to an earlier question, when I sought to demonstrate the link between hunger and HIV. Let me expand my comments a bit. People who are HIV positive and who lack appropriate tr…
Read More
…s, and resources, as Professor Lloyd Burton of the University of Colorado, Denver, pointed out in a recent Denver Post editorial: … the news media mindset and resulting language of its discourse is saturated in metaphors of war. We are treated daily to visuals of ex-military aircraft bombing fires and structures with toxic fire-retardant. We have strong, courageous, well-trained and well-disciplined “fighters” in the field being coordinated by a t…
Read More…getting too many days off. More atheist billboards, this time in Florida. Denver Broncos rookie Tim Tebow has added a tonsure haircut to his mix of evangelical Christianity and football. The new do has drawn comparisons between the former Florida Gator star and Saint Francis of Assisi. Then there’s the question of why the usual scripture citation on Tebow’s eye-black didn’t make in onto the cover of the latest NCAA football video game. Perhaps to…
Read MoreDenver, Colorado can feel like an alternate universe for a lot of reasons, but now we can add a new one to the list. Because in the first such case of which I’m aware, a bakery in Denver has been sued for refusing to bake a homophobic cake. According to the reports, the plaintiff in the suit requested that the baker bake him a cake that said “God hates gays” along with a picture of two men holding hands with an X over them. When the baker—who ide…
Read More