Religion Dispatches
…eveloping charismatic and photogenic representatives of the lifestyle they promote. To this end, VF creates a beautiful glossy catalogue populated with high quality photographs of [the] Phillips children and friends in romantic historic costumes and settings: Jamestown, the Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and the Wild West. In these images, and generally in the literature and stories of Vision Forum, gender roles are greatly exaggerated and glamorized…
Read More…cigarette and a beer (both forbidden according to the LDS Church’s dietary code, “The Word of Wisdom”), more substantial coverage this week is focusing on Romney’s service as bishop of his LDS congregation in Belmont, Massachusetts in the 1980s. On Monday, the Washington Post offered a revealing account of Bishop Romney’s interactions with Boston’s robust Mormon feminist community during tense years for the movement, when the LDS Church played a…
Read More…ated into criminalizing such styles, coming uncomfortably close to a dress code. Many of those against the bill are worried that it threatens national unity; though Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, it has significant minorities from other religions who feel that this bill is pushing a definition of pornography under the guise of “Islamicizing” the entire nation or riding roughshod over Indonesia’s secular pluralism. There are…
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…n Diego, a pastoral and family care center dedicated to “the formation and promotion of Catholic leaders in the Hispanic community.” In her lawsuit, Birge charges that Hernandez was such an involved participant in Centro San Juan that its Director, Luis Soto, referred to him as an employee. Hernandez, who was trained at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, and the Mexican-American Catholic College in San Antonio, was also the 200…
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…iended Zairian strongman Mobutu Sese Seku and pled on the 700 Club for the United States to lift sanctions on his murderous regime. Zimbabwe as “Christian Nation” Together with the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the African Centre for Law and Justice is working to garner the support of religious leaders and activists for constitutional provisions that would “affirm that Zimbabwe is a predominantly Christian nation founded on biblical principl…
Read More…l was also a good way to “house” a lot of people without running into fire code violations. I could not find any other religious events advertised. Could it be that people of other faiths simply held private devotions? Perhaps, but more likely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and their friends were the major sponsors of the whole weekend but just wanted it to appear more broadly based. The Poli…
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…tly unseemly about advocating for reproductive or LGBT rights.” The public promotion of “abortion reduction” as a necessary “compromise” to end the “culture wars” not only undercuts my work and the work of groups such as PRA, NARAL, and NOW, but it also happens to be unnecessary to attract evangelical swing voters for the Democratic Party. Errors in Analyzing Evangelical Voters Polling data on shifts in evangelical voting patterns did not spring f…
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…st-century Christians, a people under siege, the authors used allegory and coded language to convey a message of hope to believers and to protect authors from certain death at the hands of their oppressors. The author of Revelations suggests readers may not understand the severe trials and tribulations of their time, but reminds them that Jesus teaches in Christ all is well. Where Revelations was, “once seen as encouragement to have faith,” Schlin…
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…ne, not the purity of those who say Mass and administer the Church. In the United States, he has approved an ongoing investigation of nuns whose social activism ranges from anti-war activity to challenging the Roman Catholic ban on contraception, married priests, women priests, and acceptance of same-sex relationships. But there’s no investigation of the reasons why widespread sexual activity by priests persists; whether it be child sexual abuse,…
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…emacy or any form of intolerance,” wrote Martin R. Castro, Chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, in his closing remarks on the commission’s recent 300-page report on “Peaceful Coexistence” between nondiscrimination principles and civil liberties. “Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the…
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