Religion Dispatches
…sement, it was time for hajj. By this time the number of persons who had flooded the city was astronomical. The roommate and I often opted for joining prayer lines out on the street, rather than to fight with the crowds for the Haram mosque at this point. That is, unless we planned ahead by at least an hour. They said the Saudi government had allowed five million this year. I don’t know where the information comes from and besides, can one individ…
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The successful promotion of the Shrine to Our Lady of Good Help in Champion, Wisconsin is not merely evidence of “centuries-old tradition of folk Catholicism driven by local traditions,” as Lewis Wallace suggests in these pages—although he’s right about the endurance of local Christianities. The event has less to do with popular devotions, though, than the global politics of the Catholic leadership. The main question posed by Bishop David Ricken’…
Read More…ge, the coalition working to keep the state’s new gay marriage law on the books by coaxing voters to approve Referendum 74 this fall, have a clear mission: to move people of faith. Four years ago, they watched in horror and disbelief as California’s marriage equality law was repealed by Proposition 8, aided by the money of religious conservatives, much of which came from outside the state. Washington could go the same way, now that its February la…
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…in close to her grandfather, whose eyes sparkle with memories of his childhood in Lahore, Pakistan. He points to faded photograph of two young boys: “This is me. And this is Yusuf.” Every evening they flew kites together, before stealing jhajariyas from the sweet shop owned by Yusuf’s family. A harsh reality interrupts these wistful recollections: “When partition came, we had to relocate to India overnight. … I miss Yusuf a lot.” The grandfather’s…
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…from other communities, even our own Latino community. You’re not in a cocoon! “ Galedary said that advocacy for social justice and human dignity, which is the heart of LA Voice’s interfaith organizing efforts, is also fundamental to Islam. What had initially been a meeting about how LALMA could address insular concerns became a conversation about how a relatively small community could serve as a force multiplier for collaborative efforts on beha…
Read More…agher, and veteran reporters Kimberly Winston and Lauren Markoe resigning soon thereafter. In the letter, Merritt wrote that his departure was due to “irreconcilable differences” between Merritt, Gallagher and interim editor-in-chief G. Jeffrey MacDonald, a UCC minister and religion writer whose RNS bio indicates that he has no previous experience as an editor. While Merritt had initially indicated in his statement that he wasn’t interested in mak…
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…rogue session as exhibiting “all of the passion and religious fervor of a good Sunday service.” McIntosh’s choice of words is neither accidental nor unique. Abbott, who posted video of the event via Facebook Live, has taken to calling such spectacles “political sermons,” and she sees the threat posed by Idaho’s far-right radicals as theocratic at its core, an assessment essentially in agreement with analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Whi…
Read More…h on all three major issues: abortion, embryonic stem cell research and school vouchers.” Several of the Council’s advisory Board members responded to Donohue by pointing out that while they viewed abortion as a “profound moral issue,” they felt it was not the only issue of concern to voters. In early June, Donohue issued another statement declaring victory over the Council, saying that it appeared that his “initial recommendation—to dissolve the…
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…e sophisticated ReadScriptures app allows Latter Day Saints to highlight, bookmark, and search the entire canon of Mormon texts. Billed as “the perfect companion to your Halal digital lifestyle,” iSalat allows Muslim users to calculate the proper prayer times, wherever they may travel. One of the many available Jewish scripture apps, iTalmud gives the user access to the entire Babylonian Talmud in the original Gemaric Aramaic and Hebrew. The iBles…
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Depending on how you look at it, Pi Day is a festival of nerds, a math class gimmick, a chance to pause and reflect on the infinite, or just a good excuse to eat a lot of sugar. For these and many other reasons people around the world have taken March 14th to ponder geometry’s most popular constant. Pi (π), a number used to measure the circumference of circles, is approximately 3.1415. I say approximately because pi is a transcendental number, me…
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