Religion Dispatches
Via Joe Sudbay, here’s a list of the 94 House Republicans (so far) who have lined up to co-sponsor a resolution demanding that President Obama defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Sudbay points out that ye olde conventional wisdom says tea partiers only care about taxes and government spending, once again, their actions disprove that theory. As the Public Religion Research Institute showed last year, tea party adherents are much more like…
Read More…ous beliefs. Huckabee recently said that all Americans should be forced to listen to pseudo-historian David Barton at gunpoint. While his name doesn’t appear on the list of the company’s “master historians,” Huckabee is clearly following Barton’s template where everything is spelled out in terms of good versus evil and anything in between is simply airbrushed from history. They’re like a Sarah Palin speech crossed with those Davey and Goliath cart…
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…the time since the last digitally-integrated confession and including the list of sins clicked in the examination of conscience. Once the penitent reviews her or his sins (logged in the Examination of Conscience option), the app invites the recitation of “Act of Contrition” prayer, after which she or he is instructed to “Receive absolution and respond ‘Amen.’” Going perhaps more grammatical here than I am truly able anyway, I’d merely note that t…
Read More…raging religious leaders to devote their sermons to the environment. For a list of participating places of worship near you, go here. From the Clergy Letter Project’s statement: Religious people from many diverse faith traditions and locations around the world understand that evolution is quite simply sound science; and for them, it does not in any way threaten, demean, or diminish their faith in God. In fact, for many, the wonders of science ofte…
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…ple cash their paychecks—perhaps they even follow Doug Scott’s LDI boycott list in their daily shopping—go home and tune in to EWTN, read the latest blogs and decide what to pontificate about tonight. They don’t act, and they don’t worry anymore about results, except those which will be occasionally delivered through prayer. If we could pray away abortion, however, it would have been over a long time ago. And those are just a few examples. All of…
Read MoreThe list of states considering anti-Shari’ah legislation is growing. South Carolina can be added along with South Dakota. The Muslim Public Affairs Council is trying to get more Muslims writing for TV and movies in Hollywood. The number of US Muslims accused of terrorism dropped by half in 2010, a new study reports. A pair of doves just didn’t want to leave the Pope’s window this week. People who believe the end of the world will come on 12/21/12…
Read MoreA creationist textbook publisher in Texas has withdrawn its name from a list of those planning on submitting supplemental materials for adoption by the Texas Board of Education. The Foundation for Thought and Ethics had thrown its name into the ring in November for the Texas Education Agency, saying that it intended to submit materials to be used in state biology classes. In 2009, the Board of Education approved new standards to its state biology…
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…ry B. Lynch posed the question of women’s ordination to her Christmas card list in 1974. Her friends’ enthusiastic responses led scholars and activists to plan a national gathering to discuss this idea, then still considered outlandish. In November of 1975, the Women’s Ordination Conference took place in Detroit, Michigan; the eponymous organization arose from that spirited event. WOC sponsored another meeting in 1978 in Baltimore where women wer…
Read More…f internet technological and capacity innovation before the advent of the smart phone. And if we want to start a serious conversation about where presidential candidates get their money and how ethical that money is, let’s do it. I have a laundry list of labor, environmental, feminist, and human rights issues with multinational corporations I’d love to start working through. But don’t give me a thin, opportunistic connect-the-Mormon-dots story a…
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…bout their personal lives in order to answer God’s calling. (Check out the list of bloggers on Wallis’ “God’s Politics” blog. Can you find an out gay person among them?) By refusing to take sides, men like Wallis and Claiborne only reinforce the need to hide for the sake of serving the kingdom of God. While it is commendable that Sojourners seeks to defend gay people against physical or legal harm, their unwillingness to fight for their spiritual…
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