Religion Dispatches
…boredom? I wonder. Needless to say, to the extent that longevity research promotes ways to alleviate the suffering caused by debilitating diseases such as Altzheimer and Parkinson, they are all very beneficial. However, I also believe that all programs about extension of human life cannot be divorced from the deeper reflection about the purpose of human life. Such reflection seems to be missing from the transhumanist literature. One could object…
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…go through multiple layers of approval, to the point where you can’t even use the word LGBT. They’ll use something like “Spectrum” or “Welcome Ministry.” It has to be so coded that it doesn’t ruffle any feathers, and that’s not the case for women. And that’s very sad. To me, LGBT people are sometimes treated like lepers. One of the things I’ve learned in this informal ministry is the unbelievable things priests, sisters, brothers and lay associat…
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…ion of Evangelicals last year published a paper which deemed contraceptive use acceptable for married couples, but (because it opposes sex outside of marriage) not for unmarried couples. But the religious right promotes significant activism, as varied as pseudo-academic papers and popular culture, against the use of contraception even by married couples. The Howard Center on Family, Religion, and Society, a religious right think tank, has called c…
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…bor, Miller must, if the charge is true, not really be a Christian. Or, to use another example, the Westboro Baptist Church must not really be Christians because true Christians would never protest at funerals. It’s an effective strategy, insofar as it appears to protect the integrity of mainstream religious belief against what appear as more extreme elements. Indeed, sometimes it’s appropriate and necessary to do so. But it can also be lazy and d…
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…victed for doing his job.” He has, moreover, encouraged police officers to use violence on suspects. “Why show restraint?” the American president repeatedly asked police officers in Long Island, equating roughing up of suspects with the enforcement of law. And it is an equation: for Trump, as for Arpaio, unchecked power—the violence of the state, aimed at citizens, at journalists, or at “illegals”—is not merely a prerogative, it is a good. This is…
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…d, that if you actually think that’s both your business and an appropriate use of the law, you had better be falling over yourself to end sexual violence and rape culture? That you’d best be trying to figure out how everyone can access contraception, including emergency contraception, and including contraception that their abusers can’t sabotage in order to perpetuate the abuse? And that you naturally want to make it safer, easier, and less expens…
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…anyone shows up. For space reasons I won’t go into The Family’s multiple abuses of the religious tax exemption. Many RD readers will be familiar with the story of their notorious townhouse on C Street in Washington, which for many years got away with being a tax-exempt “church” even though it actually functioned as a private club for powerful members of Congress who paid a nominal rent to live there. But this abuse pales compared to the major crim…
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…comedies in which Chico and Harpo are running a slick little scam. They’ve used a fishing pole to hook a dollar bill. Chico uses the money to buy something. The seller then pockets the bill. As soon as he starts to walk off, Harpo deftly pulls back on his pole, retrieving the money and delivering it to Chico: who then turns around and uses it to scam the next customer. How many of our charitable contributions are like that? Even after we’ve handed…
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…nt levels of “strictness.” For example, if the modern state ever wishes to use racial categories in making policy, then, because of our checkered and very bloody racial history, these discriminating laws and policies will be subject to the very strictest scrutiny. (That is what has bedeviled affirmative action policies of late; even using such categories for the noblest of purposes is Constitutionally suspect, at least at the outset.) If the state…
Read More…would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It’s not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We’re also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it.” Just so. Sigh….
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