Religion Dispatches
…10 p.m. on Friday, ten minutes late, after some technical troubles. The first post: “via @ServingGirl: is so tired. Caiaphas and the priests have been up all night questioning a man who claims to be the Messiah. And I wait on them.” Yes, the text itself was under 140 chars, but with the “via @ServingGirl:” part it went a bit over. By 1:27, a few such posts prompted “@jgderuvo” to shout out, for all watching twspassionplay’s Twitter page to see, “G…
Read More…e of them. Leaving home in my teens meant I would never live with my youngest sister like I had with the other siblings. By the time I started visiting my mom with my own children, my sister lived on her own. When my mom became ill and could not keep up the homestead, she went to live with my sister until her death. It was not long before my mother died that I finally came to live somewhat close—a two hour’s drive—to my extended family. Then it wa…
Read More…Fasting is also a significant faith practice for Mormons, who routinely fast the first Sunday of each month as well as at times of heightened spiritual need. One of the seventeen original fasters, Cristian Avila, is a young LDS immigration activist from Phoenix, Arizona. As Cristian grew too weak to continue his fast in public, Sam Adair, a self-described “active” Mormon, father of three and immigration attorney from Austin, Texas, traveled to…
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…icipate in rounds or in patient evaluation sessions. I recall how, as a first-year seminary student doing what is called “supervised ministry” at a New Haven mental health hospital, I was somewhat shocked to see how patients’ behavior was interpreted purely in terms of reactions to their medications, whereas I could see plainly that many of these same patients were responding to the presence or absence of human connection—visits and phone calls fr…
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…at it is: a nonsensical theory about sexuality invented by “gay” political strategists to serve their own selfish interests at the expense of the welfare of society as a whole. Also in 2002, Lively joined other activists in addressing a rally protesting the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd County High School in Cannonsburg, KY, where he said, “Normally you see these clubs only going in where the homosexuals already have significa…
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…Nations, a case for the U.S or Israel attacking Iran, and a pitch for the phone ministry 1-888-RAPTURE. Apparently the UFO issue got onto Lindsey’s radar screen because of reports that United Nations is paying attention to it, as discussed here. Lindsey offers a mass of evidence (quite disturbing if true) claiming sightings by military personnel who witnessed UFOs disarming nuclear weapons. In Lindsey’s interpretation, such disarmament fits a sim…
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…use that loaded phrase of the African-American writer Richard Wright. We must struggle against this “American god” or the idol of the white, western god-man. Indeed, we must struggle against this god with an eye toward a different social order and under the realization that things don’t have to be this way—and that they must change. What I’m in effect calling for is a Christianity uncoupled from this nation-state project, from the project of socia…
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…ing as a unity of the virtues when it comes to food. The vanilla that is most sustainable might also put vanilla farmers in Madagascar out of business. The vanilla that is closest to its “natural” form (not in Madagascar, which is not its native environment) might be very expensive and unaffordable to people. There’s a real reluctance to own these kinds of tradeoffs, but I think it’s incredibly important with food to realize that perhaps what’s be…
Read More…ans believed that homosexuality was socially unacceptable. In a separate Post story, Katy Pearce suggested that the anti-gay campaign in Azerbaijan, launched after an investigative journalism coalition released a report on a massive corruption scandal, was the latest in a series of anti-Western campaigns that have “targeted civil society and pro-democracy groups.” LGBT groups are seen as a symbol of the West’s attack on traditional values. And no…
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…th services as well as educational and economic opportunities. The Daily Best posted the latest in its series of discussions with global LGBT activists, this one with Anastasia Smirnova, who fled the country after having been arrested for psoting an LGBT banner at the Sochi Olympics. Mexico: ‘Quiet marriage equality revolution’ spreads BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder, with research assistance from journalist Rex Wockner, reports on the wave of marriage eq…
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