Religion Dispatches
…re requires us to critique it, and also be prepared that our lives and privileges will change as it transforms. Though this particular conversation is not over, it is merely the latest in a series of such debates across the American Buddhist landscape about the Dharma, pacifism, and militarism. At this point, some readers might be asking exactly the same thing that Foreign Policy did not long ago: “Isn’t Buddhism a religion that places respect for…
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…frame the Church’s walls, glass stained and used to form its windows, or nails used to build its altar.” But while Gorsuch’s opinion suggests that he would support even direct state subsidization of religious activities, Sotomayor argued that directly subsidizing a house of worship—even for ostensibly non-religious expenses such as playground surfaces—is proscribed by the Establishment Clause. It’s notable that the Court has previously declined to…
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…f refugees, the cry of bullied trans teenagers, the mourning songs from families of black men and women killed by police. Myopic and unwavering focus on abortion is the way to avoid the carnality of living, breathing beings. The way to get away from bodies. Away from the bodies of murdered children. Away from the body politic. It’s a way to render love for angels, while pretending you are one. In 2021 many white evangelicals (and others) no longer…
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…nd perhaps even their base (Evangelicals and Mormons). That’s a real possibility: Hillary Clinton is a uniquely controversial candidate. A Democratic nominee more acceptable to Evangelical women matched up against a Trumpist candidate could turn today’s 66% Evangelical support into 2024’s 55%—or worse. If 2016 has taught us nothing else, of course, it’s that anything could happen. Even as I wrote this post, FBI Director James Comey launched a bomb…
Read More…y—it will likely have significant impact on the American culture more broadly as service members move back and forth between military and civilian life….
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…mentary school. Find a child. Place a set of 30 stickers in front of the child. Tell the child to pick her favorite ten. Step two. Introduce a plot twist. Tell the kid that not everyone in school could participate in the sticker bonanza. Fortunately, there is a chance to share: the kid can pick between zero and 10 of her favorite, cream-of-the-crop stickers, and set them aside in an envelope. That envelope will go to another person in the school….
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…istributed quite randomly, depending on the history of the city. Burkhard Bilger, in a recent New Yorker profile of neuroscientist David Eagleman, describes this transition in our understanding of how the brain keeps time. During the mid-nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that there was a single, integrated time-keeper somewhere in the brain—the equivalent of a neurological stop watch. More recent studies, however, suggest a hodgepodge…
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…ad warned the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph that a priest “fit the profile of a child predator,” and the diocese didn’t take action against the priest for six months. Fr. Shawn Ratigan was arrested a few weeks ago on three counts of possessing child pornography. The diocesan review board never saw the case. Bishop Robert Finn eventually apologized. These recent developments should not have been a surprise. In October 2005—just three years aft…
Read More…more by “sexual identity problems.” Seriously. Setting that kind of tone will probably only encourage more and more absurd statements. The recent post on Jesus seems especially insensitive, considering who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to b…
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…ers, apparently lived partially as Jews, and had some status in the Jewish community. But today’s non-Jewish Jews aren’t identifying as such because they live in Jewish enclaves, but because identifying as “Jewish” has become an asset and fashionable; it’s no longer a liability. The impact this community will have on the Jewish community remains to be seen. *Read more from “Pew and the Jews: ‘So What?’”, an RD special feature on the Pew survey. L…
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