Religion Dispatches
…ext time and a next time until an alternate vision of society—one that remixes religion, politics and economics into a more communal and collective venture, stirs hearts, minds and votes for a better America. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $10 will help us pay writers, coders, interns, and editors. And will earn you our endless gratitude….
Read More…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…
Read More…lity courses, yoga courses, or zen courses, but none of those things would free the person to be like a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit, according to Francis, has the power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at…
Read More
…nts are correct about what the law and Constitution require—their right to free expression was violated—and that Wendler and Kacsmaryk are wrong. After providing an overview and history of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in US constitutional law, Seidel moved on to discuss the Christian Right’s abuse of these key concepts. He noted how the weaponization of “religious freedom” as a bludgeon for Christian supremacy, in tan…
Read More
…tion do much belt tightening. Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no equivalence between criticizing people who hold (or enable) dehumanizing opinions—and even, perhaps, applying consequences for those opinions—and the suffering imposed on those who are dehumanized by those opinions (and whose rights may even be restricted by policies grounded in bigotry). Case in point: the transgender community took particular issue with the Harper’s letter, with tran…
Read More
…’re preaching because I have a hard time figuring out what the differences between the ideologies are. Do you mind sharing a little about your own religious background and how it might have informed your motivations for the project? My parents were not very religious. I mean they were Jewish, but mostly the “ish,” like Jew-ish, culturally Jewish. I wasn’t brought up in a religious environment. I definitely look at these megachurches with interest,…
Read More
…are for the killer whale Shamu, These children had seen the popular movie “Free Willy” and were saddened and disturbed by Mister Rogers’s apparent unwillingness to free Shamu from the confines of the Sea World tank. The letters are very touching in the care they express for a killer whale in need of the freedom afforded by a vast ocean. They are also moving in the sense that they are the product of Rogers’s own creation—his handwork in encouraging…
Read More…—but you deserved it. Many Muslims, especially in Muslim countries, bounce between various mosques, looking for better khutbahs (see entry before last), awesome qira’ah (Qur’an recitation), or good-looking ‘sisters’—we don’t date our actual sisters; calm down, right-wing. If they’re leaving roundabout taraweeh, that special late-night Muslim prayer, you already know something about their attitude to faith. Good pick-up lines include, “What’s your…
Read More…t Amendment has any meaning, it is that the government cannot suppress the free speech because it — or anyone else — disagrees with the speech.” The Thomas More Law Center has pledged to file a suit on Jones’ behalf. By the way, I’ve seen TMLC in action. Its lawyers defended the Dover school board in Kitzmiller v Dover. If Jones has any brains at all – and I’m not saying he does – he’ll get on the phone to the ACLU right now, begging its attorneys…
Read More
…ity, the ability to live alongside our Creator for all time, to accept the free gift of salvation offered to us by Jesus Christ. The struggle on a daily basis as a Christian is to remind ourselves of this. The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan… But then things get weird. Rubio pivots from an evangelical assertion of salvation through Christ to a Kennedyesque call for the common good (which was itself derived from Luke 12:48: “For…
Read More