Religion Dispatches
…on risk reduction and condom use would reduce the annual incidence rate of new infections from 20% to 7%. This simple intervention would prevent between 35% and 60% of all new HIV infections in Lusaka. Kristin Dunkle and her colleagues have demonstrated the limits of “ABC” prevention and offer a simple, realistic model that could drastically impact HIV transmission rates in Zambia. The challenge—a challenge embedded in religious language and pract…
Read More…other religious faiths, too.” (Like the Prime Minister using his office to promote his Christian faith.) But then Cameron reveals his politician’s circumspection, arguing on the one hand that advocates of “secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary n…
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…ng forward and developing this project, so when I saw this other shirt, I knew how important it was. I think a lot of people recognize this concept from a biological standpoint (in terms of the mitochondria) but also recognize it in terms of the ways in which the black female presence is honored, especially in Europe. We’re now at this apex, this pivotal point where there’s a rush of awareness. You see it at the political level with Black Lives Ma…
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…ns of sisters dedicated to serving the needs of the sick and the poor, the new Vatican Code of Canon Law cloistered them all, imposing rigid rules that undercut their ministries. As the century moved on, however, relations between the Vatican and the sisters seemed to improve. In its effort to respond to the horrors of the twentieth century, the Vatican ordered the sisters to become better educated, to update their rules and habits, and to begin m…
Read More…?) And who were similarly silent when the party tried to capitalize on the coded racism of the anti-Obama forces in 2012 or upend the Affordable Care Act, even though the Catholic Church has been advocating for universal health care since Model Ts were on the road. And it’s even funnier that those who helped put Bush and Cheney in office and watched as they led the nation into endless, unwinnable wars, and justified torture to prevent an ever-pres…
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…and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.—Abraham Lincoln, 1862 If you find it surprising that the Obamans have the time, let alone the patience, to spend today in a fiscal responsibility loya jirga with the likes of Nixon Commerce Secretary and Wall Street billionaire Peter G. “Pete” Peterson, you have every right to be surprised…
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…es. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a big breakthrough for the pope to promote “responsible parenthood,” here’s Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the l…
Read More…o-Indo-European dawn goddesses (Any and all citations are from Wikipedia). New Testament scholars have noted that since The DaVinci Code became a cultural phenomenon, there’s been a surge of conspiratorial claims about Jesus, the early church, and the influence of Pagan mystery religions. Authors such as Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman have written with bewilderment at the revival of “mythicist” theories of Jesus and “nineteenth-century philosophical…
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…rofessional public intellectuals like Gordis, this is a way to stay in the news. For academics such as myself, it is a way to feel relevant when most days we teach a small cadre of wonderful undergraduate and graduate students and toil away at scholarship that few people will ever read. But for all of us, one hopes, there is integrity in the process. We passionately believe what we write and we are simultaneously committed to literary etiquette an…
Read More…ther religious faiths, too.” (Like the Prime Minister using his office to promote his Christian faith.) But then Cameron reveals his politician’s circumspection, arguing on the one hand that advocates of “secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary n…
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