Religion Dispatches
…ms, all Jews might decouple our peoplehood from our racial pasts, sanction patrilineal descent, and recognize the vast and enriching continuum between Jewish and partially Jewish forms of religious practice. If Jews took these steps we might validate and welcome, as Jews-in-process, all of the Jews and near-Jews who are the children, partners, and friends of Jews of all faiths, and all hues. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $10 will help…
Read More…hat they have. One thing is clear: religious conservatives who wanted to hear where the candidates stand on this issue are getting their wish. Welcome to the religion controversies of the 2016 campaign….
Read More
…bration. Museum CEO Jacqueline Frank, who specified that all religions are welcome, also noted that, of the 66 trees in the festival, only six are from Christian groups. Second, as the Satanists are quick to point out, the Christmas tree was a pagan symbol before it was a Christian one, so claims of desecrating the “traditional understanding of Christmas” are murky at best. Third and most importantly, the Supreme Court declared in Lynch v. Donnell…
Read More
…he sinner, hate the sin,” which basically means that homosexual people are welcome but they need to change. The crazy thing in all this is that there’s only one other thing that the book of discipline says is incompatible with Christian teaching besides homosexuality, and that’s war. Wow. Not even murder? Not even murder. So I think we need to change the language so that there is more freedom for interpretation—so we don’t have to act against chur…
Read More
…ou can’t help but cringe at how truly awful it is—newcomers are simply not welcome here. The metaphor feels apt. What we read when we scroll through Facebook does something—the difference between names we see often enough to remember and those we don’t actually means something. But maybe this is where hope lies. Amidst the flurry of post-election news coverage, I worried I wouldn’t have it in me to explore the many online debriefs of the Gilmore G…
Read More
…tially present to RD readers for just a minute during Holy Week, I want to welcome a new Kindle-only book from Tony Jones: A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin. I have never met Tony Jones, and I was initially inclined to offer a sneer instead of a review. I am still inclined toward sniping, as you will see, but the easy snipe just won’t do this time. I’ve thought about it, and (God forbid) I’ve even prayed about it. I…
Read More
…t politics as stakeholders in the discussion. Unfortunately, alongside the welcome emergence of fairer, more accurate reporting on evangelicalism, the same old patterns persist, for example in this New York Times piece that paints the opposition of many white evangelicals to getting vaccinated against COVID—an opposition driven by the decidedly unsympathetic motivations of fear-mongering conspiracy theories and resentment against othered groups—in…
Read More
…is the means by which all voices are heard with respect, all opinions are welcome, silence is observed together, and its fruits are discussed with care. For the men, I suspect that this kind of “process” was challenging, a sharp contrast to their usual “deal with it” approach. Regardless, the process has mercifully come to an end, and sooner than expected—probably a sign that the Vatican has bigger problems to deal with than the theo-political pr…
Read More…licy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differing political orders. This realization has led us to pose a number of crucial questions to those engaged in the promotion of religious freedom as a stable and singular human right. These questions, explored in detail in the PoRF volume…
Read More
…ciate the difference between legal permission and moral propriety. I would welcome the opportunity to sit with you so as to attempt to move your conscience to my conviction that we must humble ourselves before this sublime work. But for now I will not rest, I will not sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight, until I hear the end of this violation. And neither should you, for it is the abomination that brings desolation. The final reckoning will not…
Read More