Religion Dispatches
…something different now—not just my own blood, but a larger communion of the self in the world. I write every morning in my kitchen, stirring my coffee with one of Grammy’s spoons. I’ll never use it in a grand candlelit dinner with my children and their children. It’s for everyday use. I am the end of my line. But also, the beginning of another kind….
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…rn Baptist Church upholds gracious submission as godly and relegates the abuse as “satanic,” casting them into different realms. Yet, submission and abuse should not occupy spaces so far apart in our theological imaginations, because they work together. When leaders demand unquestioning obedience from women and girls, it sets up the perfect environment for predation to occur. He was both people. I thought about the word hypocrisy: its origin is fr…
Read More…, and lack of accountability, which, in effect, he had become. Strongmen abuse their people, verbally or even physically, and shelter other kinds of abuse behind opaque leadership structures and authoritarian rules. Mark Driscoll, the butch young fellow who built a Seattle-area megachurch, was celebrated for his strongman style, which included using juvenile language against people whose sexual orientations and gender expressions he didn’t approve…
Read More…take it back nearly 50 years to when it was on the brink of approving the use of contraception but backed down because it would codify the idea, which it had already tacitly accepted, that the purpose of marriage wasn’t limited to reproduction. This, in turn, would negate much of the church’s biological determinism around the role of women. Many of the doctrinal developments on issues related to sex and women since then have been ever-more elabor…
Read More…ses the payment of taxes as the price of participation in the economy. You use Caesar’s money, you pay Caesar’s taxes. You use US government-issued greenbacks, you pay the US taxes. Were Sekulow to open the Bible, he would also note Romans 13:1-7, that passage so beloved of conservative authoritarians: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been ins…
Read More…e speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people. On the other hand, Warren Throckmorton, the evangelical psychologist who has played such a significant role in raising awareness of the evangelical world’s use of myth and falsehood to spread homophobia, had last month taken the religious right groups to task for their “mostly unfortunate and unhelpful” responses to the the SPLC. He called Kam…
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…he feed is unsafe for women or rape victims to look at. And posting the accusers’ names, over and over, because one of the things we’re objecting to is that posting the accusers’ names is subjecting them to massive invasion of privacy, you can find their names and home addresses online, and that might get them hurt or even, like, raped, . . . . And threatening to hack my PayPal, and threatening to hack Tiger Beatdown. . . . Every time I look away…
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…and stand up for those rights if another person is being harassed––not because they agree with the person being harassed (I tell them they can absolutely disagree) but because the rights belong to all of us. If we allow anyone to chip away at those rights we will see the foundation of our nation weaken (back to my foundation analogy!) Can parents opt out if they don’t want their children to learn about other religions? And how many parents did thi…
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…ota spiritual leaders are careful regarding the details of their continued use of the Black Hills for religious purposes, there is no doubt they visit and still use their sacred sites on lands stolen over 135 years ago; lands they’re now forced to try to buy back. The brochure for the sale of the lands by Brock’s Auction House of South Dakota obliquely mentions the moment: “For 136 years, brave, strong, pioneering families… have forged the prairie…
Read More…From Catholic Perspectives” scheduled for September 25 which reportedly caused Chaput to cancel the group’s permission to use the space. “Unfortunately, this is yet another instance of the kind of exclusion LGBT Catholics and supporters have endured for decades. Bishops have refused to allow us to meet in our own Churches, retreat centers and colleges,” Equally Blessed said in a statement. “There is a lack of information in the Catholic Church ab…
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