Religion Dispatches
…ndian community was fierce. *** Breanna grew up in an atheist household in San Francisco, but lately she’s been searching for something more. “I’m in a physics program right now, and the more advanced you get in this stuff, the more you have to just shrug and admit you don’t know. So I started casting out for something to follow, something that gave you more of an answer than ‘probably entropy,’ feel me?” She attended a Universalist church for a w…
Read More…ut insiders said a hardcore of eight to 12 conservative archbishops from Africa and Asia are preparing to quit the meeting on the first morning unless the liberal Americans ‘repent’ or the Archbishop throws them out. In what would be a massive challenge to Archbishop Welby’s authority, the conservatives, who represent some of the biggest of the 38 individual Churches in the worldwide ‘Communion’, are then likely move to their own headquarters near…
Read More…onth, Hagee spoke and brought a sizable contingent of congregants from his San Antonio church. Perry has prayed at Hagee’s church, and agreed with him that non-Christians are doomed to hell. The appeasement accusation is as old as Neville Chamberlain, and deployed with frequency by Christian Zionists to argue that Israel faces a threat as dire as Nazism. Perry wouldn’t be the first Republican to accuse Obama of appeasement; George W. Bush did it i…
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…Sexual diversity in many forms is now accepted or at least tolerated in American society—except same-sex sex, that is. Many Americans who are white or black, Christian or Jew, Muslim or Native American, fundamentalist or atheist, and on across racial, ethnic, and religious communities can grant social legitimacy to women giving blow jobs and couples wife-swapping, group sex and one-on-one action; but men engaged in anal sex or women penetrating ea…
Read More…on’ thing,” says Juliana Anderson, a member of IKON Christian Community in San Francisco. “The meaning of religion and religious is so messed up these days. It’s got a bad rap.” For many young Christians, identifying as such bears the risk of being characterized as judgmental, as discriminatory, as politically conservative, as anything like their unhip counterparts. By repudiating religion, they establish themselves as subversive, as anti-establis…
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…ions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.” Seemingly overnight, this religious figure exiled from a remote Central Asian territory was mixing with the Western glitterati. He was the subject of two Hollywood feature films, both released in 1997. Sony Pictures released Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt as the Austrian mountaineer and member of the Nazi SS Heinrich Har…
Read More…arolina is the fifth to succeed from the Church, following the Dioceses of San Joaquin in central California; Fort Worth, Texas; Quincy, Illinois; and Pittsburgh, PA. A pastoral letter from Jefferts Schori to members of the Diocese, however, made clear that The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, as with other dioceses voting to secede, “continues to be a constituent part of The Episcopal Church, even if a number of its leaders have departed.” S…
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San Francisco was bedlam last night after the Giants broke a 53-year drought to win the World Series; you could hear the sound of the streets from way up in the hills over the Mission district. And near the ball park? Forget it. But amid the din, and my own rarely-elicited hometown pride, I found myself wondering about those elderly nuns who have been praying for so many years for the Texas Rangers. They’ve had a few minutes of fame this season,…
Read More…alled,” in Mormon parlance) to serve as a leader in an LDS congregation in San Francisco.” All of these changes have been made because LGBT people were faithful to an institution that has historically despised and rejected them. Progress comes from making changes within, not protesting outside the doors. I completely understand the mindset of those who would question my membership in a club where many of its members wish to eliminate me altogether…
Read More…r couples, attempting to bypass challenges before the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco sponsored by marriage equality advocates. No announcement has been made on whether the court will review the case. Meanwhile, four years after a bare-knuckle battle to pass the California anti-marriage equality Proposition 8, and in the shadow of a presidential campaign in which a Mormon candidate and his conservative Catholic running mate echoed the same sort…
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