Religion Dispatches
…erence came, the Africans found that they had been given these lovely cell phones, and there was no charge, and the reason why was because they wanted them to vote a certain way. The Africans have become a powerhouse to change the direction of the American churches. They have to depend on Africa to bring change at home. You will have a situation where an American might not say something, but Archbishop Akinola is free to say whatever he wants to s…
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…icts in the church could be either resolved or handled in a very different way if only we didn’t have this uncritical reverence for the Bible. Another point of contention is over the idea of literal, bodily resurrection. But you say Paul doesn’t talk about it this way? In addition to Paul saying it’s not the physical body that is raised, he goes on to speak about a spiritual body. And as he tries to explain what a spiritual body is, he uses images…
Read More…ring a bill to keep kids out of churches and mosques. Secularism is on the way out in Bangladesh. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has expelled a senior member for his plans to run for president. Some Methodist clergy are saying they’ll officiate gay marriages whether the denomination’s leaders like it or not. This comes as the United Methodist Church found Rev. Amy DeLong guilty of marrying a lesbian couple in 2009. Progressive Christians are thr…
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…confining ourselves to the indifference of insularity. Travel is, in more ways than one, a form of transcendence, a way to meld into something larger, something greater and more colorful and chaotic than our domestic agendas. Travel imparts one with the indelible impression that something is out there. That something may not be the existence of God, but it is certainly the existence of the rest of the world, for it has been proven, empirically, t…
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…was a mandate, and you did with that mandate whatever you wanted. The only way out was by winning your own election, which seemed unlikely at the moment. But then, I wondered, would they want to be treated in the same way? Then I read in The Economist of “anti-capitalist Muslims” joining the protesters, a whole class of religious Muslims that, as Mustafa Akyol has reported, disagree with Erdogan. I didn’t get to meet any so described. But their ve…
Read More…philosophies, and practices illuminated by the ceremonies, that inform the way I think about, and practice surgery. For example, central to Navajo healing philosophies is the concept of hozho, a way of living that encompasses concepts of beauty, harmony, truth, balance, and peace. We believe we are deeply connected to all elements of our world—we are not separate from that which is around us. It has been described as: “to be at one with… the world…
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…way things are changing now and will continue to change. We will grow our way into new ways that feel right and true, and the veiled God who is already ahead of us—the deus absconditus—won’t be troubled in the least. I remain grateful to all the brilliant pioneers who keep showing us the way forward: to the late, great Thomas Berry, for example; to the superb “eco-feminist” (too restrictive a label) theologians of our time (Ruether, Keller, McFag…
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…feeling is that you would, but since it was a lesbian couple you backed a way. I admit your decision made me feel as a queer woman let down by you. I have the expectation from you as a social justice magazine to defend the “under dog.” I admit I will always defend the under dog, but to be honest, this time I am (and other LGBTQ) are that. A simple ad that just challenged churches to be open, whether agree or not, to just be open and you shut it d…
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…similar claims in recent years. Meanwhile, I think that there are lots of ways for religious and nonreligious folks to share useful perspectives. There have been a number of such initiatives in recent years. For example, the Clergy Letter Project annually organizes Evolution Weekend in which sermons are preached and events held in thousands of religious congregations across the country. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a paper a few…
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…r money; they were paper that represented money, and thus were well on the way to becoming money. Either way, they rapidly became powerful, symbolic paper. The idea did not take off immediately, but when the state got directly involved in his Bank, it did. In the summer of 1716, Law and the Regency scripted a very public delivery of one million French livres to Law’s Bank (worth perhaps six million dollars). Given the government’s interest in Law’…
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