Religion Dispatches
…tually becomes neo-liberal economics. The Reformation was a product of and promoted a communications revolution in terms of print. Conservative Protestants have always been the first to understand the significance of new technologies. I think the reason for that is the Protestant preoccupation with the Word, and they get the Word out however they can. For a long time it was print. In the early 20th century it was radio. By the forties it was telev…
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…community are alive and one day they will tell us about their experiences, unlike the children who died at Mount Carmel. Comments? We enthusiastically welcome any response to this story, or to any of our features. Write to us!…
Read More…resa Kane, then president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, welcomed Pope John Paul II to a gathering of nuns held in the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington DC. Her gentle and generous welcome caused a stir because she dared to mention, albeit with deep respect, that the other half of the church (read: women) wants to be involved in all of its ministries. Her implicit reference to the ban on the ordination of women and wo…
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…racial American president of Kenyan descendant giving a hearty White House welcome to a wise – and unmarried — Latina recently confirmed to one of the most powerful positions in the country. For many conservative and fundamentalist Christians, these types of images quite literally betoken a forsaking of the nation’s Anglo-centric, patriarchal heritage, and in this view we will – we must – as that Pennsylvania protester put it, be judged. Another w…
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…own sensibility. Not only do Brown and the Masons both love secrets and encoded symbols, but they believe that all of it must surely add up to some single great truth. It is a worldview that flourished in the Enlightenment, in which occult science and a deep sense of mystery surrounded the rise of modern rationalism. What today might appear to be a contradiction between reason and occult mysticism was once a natural relationship, and no other mov…
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…re everyone from the Irish grandmother to the smallest child was included, welcome at the table, and edified. According to Catholic theology well understood, all Catholics are priests by virtue of baptism. Bill Callahan’s funeral liturgy held recently in a public school all-purpose room (sans air conditioning) was one such example of this reality. The gifted radio show host Maureen Fiedler of Interfaith Voices handled the whole celebration with ap…
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…e didn’t say it in those exact words—but that was his message. Yes, you’re welcome as lesbians to be in our church, but we expect that we’ll convict you that you’re wrong and will want to change. That’s the message of Haggard’s brand new church in Colorado Springs, which he announced this afternoon. Asked if his new church would take a position on homosexuality, Haggard said “we will take positions.” “I’m going to teach the Bible, chapter by chapt…
Read More…humanists, and other nonbelievers, though kids from religious families are welcome, too.” Speaking of leaving religion, Liberty University removed Ergun Caner as dean of the seminary after questions arose regarding his Muslim background. Apparantly, Liberty wasn’t sure if and how Caner left his former tradition. Caner’s removal prompted RD’s Hussein Rashid to ask, “does one have to be an ex-Muslim to be a good Christian?” The Gulf oil spill contin…
Read More…that is completely understandable. My first reaction to that concern was, “welcome to our world.” The LGBT community has been alienated from most of the world for the majority of history, so pastors and churchgoers who balk at the president’s words can enjoy, just for a moment, our reality. Alienation is something we’re familiar with — kicked out of our families, kicked out of our churches, fired for being who we are, denied housing for being who…
Read More…could be a biblical basis for a death penalty, that the United Nations has promoted the “homosexual agenda” to Uganda’s detriment, and he lauded the bill’s promoters’ efforts to take a “principled stand” against that. It’s no wonder, then, that Bahati and Oyet interpreted his statements as supportive of their ambitions. Engle claimed to not specifically remember meeting with Bahati and Oyet while in Kampala, telling me: I don’t even remember their…
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