Religion Dispatches
…and professor-with-flexible-leave-time Harrison Ford make their way to the sanctuary of an ancient temple, where they’re given a test: choose the real Grail from a collection of fancy cups. Glover chooses the fanciest one, drinks from it, and is disintegrated, like so: Then our pal Indy selects the smallest, dustiest vessel, saying, “This is the cup of a carpenter.” He uses his cup to save Sean Connery’s life, the Nazi lady dies, and a thousand se…
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…Though the community slowly established itself in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago, the reality for many Hindu immigrants—and their children—was that they were alone in a new country without much of a support network. My story is somewhat similar to Jindal’s. I grew up in small towns in New Jersey, New York, and Ohio before my family settled in the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1980s, and I was subjected to th…
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…erians, calling itself a new Reformed body. Their website reports they now number 127 congregations and 213 pastors. Most of these come from the PCUSA. Beyond my denomination, there is a growing rift and talk of a possible schism in the United Methodist Church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has lost approximately 600 congregations in the past few years. The Anglican Communion views the Episcopal Church of the United States with increa…
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…nary.org): He (Dean Dunkle) once described Asian transit passengers in the San Francisco Bay area as “slanty-eyed.” In a large community meeting last spring, he compared the technical side of theological education to “looking up women’s skirts.” Before several faculty members and students, he spoke, as an obvious act of intimidation, of how “black people can do such interesting things with their hair,” a comment about which students complained. On…
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…Gallery, the “Yoga: The Art of Transformation” exhibition travelled to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and finally to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition served as the first major art survey of yoga in the United States and provided visual representations of yoga’s complex, dynamic history, ranging from philosopher-ascetics turning inward in pursuit of salvation through realization of the true self; to ecstatic devotees turning outward…
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…Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005); Schmidt and Sally Promey, eds.,American Religious Liberalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012); Courtney Bender, The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Kathryn Lofton in Oprah: Gospel of an Icon(Berkeley: University of California, 2011); Mat…
Read More…Wellington, New Zealand Per the National Catholic Register: “The only Anglophone nominee is Archbishop John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand. In 2005, he advocated a new ‘pastoral approach’ for allowing divorced-and-civilly-remarried Catholics to receive Communion. During last year’s synod on the family, he also voiced his support for a change in language when ministering to persons with same-sex attraction.” Archbishop Alberto Suárez Inda of Moreli…
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…h Gnanasara, but insisted that their agendas were separate. Nonetheless, a number of news reports claim that Wirathu’s 969 and Gnanasaara’s BBS movements are in league, and there are reports that Wirathu has been in contact with Buddhist monks from Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia, where pitched battles have been taking place between Buddhists and the Muslim majority in that locale. Wirathu said it wasn’t just Buddhists who were concerned…
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…ica is a homogeneous entity. In reality, however, Africa is made up of thousands of ethnic groups with rich and diverse cultures and sexualities. As appealing as the notion of African culture may be to some people, no such thing exists. Moreover, even if we wanted to imagine an authentic African culture, like all others, it would not be static. African history is replete with examples of both erotic and nonerotic same-sex relationships. For exampl…
Read More…, who is under fire for imposing a strict “morality clause” on teachers in San Francisco’s Catholic schools. But in an indication of how the religious liberty issue crosses the political lines of the Francis papacy, the letter was also signed by two noted moderates: DC Archbishop Donald Wuerl, whose DC offices would fall under the law, and Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley, who is considered Francis’ closest US ally. Of course, with Ted Cruz’s anti-…
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