Religion Dispatches
…Other organizations raising similar objections include Concerned Women for American, Americans United for Life, and the American Center for Law and Justice. As to private employers, the proposed rule takes note of the fact that private employers are not entitled to religious exemptions under other federal laws, such as Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment. Based on that precedent, the administration declined to extend an exemption t…
Read More…irst matter, much has already been said about The Hindus. HAF—as well as a number of Doniger’s academic colleagues, including those who are active in AAR—had substantive issues with her scholarship, including her use of psychoanalysis (long considered a pseudoscience), her misinterpretation of key texts, and an unusually high number of factual inaccuracies (by some independent estimates, up to 500 errors). Doniger had every right to publish her bo…
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…with what they regarded as the grave challenge posed by “degraded” Native Americans and African Americans living in close proximity to whites. Guyatt’s book is divided into three sections, each treating a major theme or phase in the white reformers’ efforts. He devotes four of his chapters to “degradation,” three to “amalgamation,” and four to “colonization.” To be clear, most of the white civic leaders who fretted about “degradation” did not bel…
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…(down eight percent in seven years, to 70.6 percent), and the rise in the number of Americans identifying as atheist, agnostic, and otherwise religiously unaffiliated (up six points in seven years, to 22.8 percent). Greg Smith, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Research Center, called the pace of the continued growth of the religiously unaffiliated “really remarkable.” The number of Americans identifying with no religion grew by 19 millio…
Read More…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…
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…d. Although Magufuli has not said anything publicly about homosexuality, a number of his appointees have made harsh remarks. Critics of gay rights say this nation — which has large numbers of Muslims and Christians — must protect traditional values. In an August speech, Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam, the capital, threatened to arrest people who were linked to gay men on social-networking sites. “If there’s a homosexual w…
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…r movement? The Black Lives Matter movement as I have experienced it has a number of queer black women on the ground doing the work. It also has trans women and trans men on the ground doing the work. They are part of the leadership. As you know the Black Lives Matter movement is a “leaderful” movement, and that is to say that not one or two persons are in charge of any action but that the movement itself very beautifully recognizes and utilizes t…
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…residential candidates remain prominent and the movement has increased its numbers in the Congress and in state governments and functions as a major and sometimes the dominant faction in the Republican Party in many states. The Christian Right remains one of the most powerful movements in American history. I should add that the implications of these things are broader than may meet the eye. Donald Trump’s calls for restricting Muslims from traveli…
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…if one wants to find water one should dig a single deep well instead of a number of shallow ones. So it embarrasses me somewhat to admit that although my language is Christian, my stories are Christian, my Scriptures are Christian and my baptism is Christian, in truth I live in the hinterlands of Christianity, just a short distance away from Buddhism’s border. I’m a Christian all right, but I can see Buddhaland from my house. It is my proximity t…
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…mber of flashbacks from when I was a young boy). In addition, there were a number of things I didn’t get the chance to explore for a very practical reason: I had a deadline. Working in publishing I’m very conscious about how important deadlines are. Writers need to make those deadlines and because I worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a number of frightening episodes that my wife experienced that I didn’t have t…
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