Religion Dispatches
…ed, even a church? At what point does national identity become fixed, and closed to other religions? How can Englishness accommodate secularity, considering that widespread agnosticism and rising atheism are arguably as new to England as Islam? And what happens to the fair number of ethnically English Muslims? They may well see no contradiction between a mosque and St. George’s Cross. They may choose a mosque that is dominated by their own ethnic…
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…osition 8 are also cranking up the fear by claiming that if its initiative loses, children as young as kindergarten age will be taught about the differences between homosexual and heterosexual marriage. Bitter battle heats up “Many speakers [at the July 30 gathering] invoked the language of warfare, raising up an army of believers, putting soldiers in the streets, being on the front lines of a battle,” a report prepared by People for the American…
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…so 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 best for the world is not best for our individual health, or perhaps the thing that tastes best is n…
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…o-life, conservative state. Senator Crain’s office did not return repeated phone calls, but according to The Daily Beast, he “said the bill is simply a statement that Oklahoma is ‘pro-life.’” Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman said much the same thing, according to Reuters, offering that “Oklahoma is a conservative pro-life state—we are proud to stand up for what we know is right.” Well, yes, it feels very good to be proud of things, doesn’t it? Might I…
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…And commenter Karen West writes: “Lila has the beauty and brains to do any number of things, but instead, she is laying down her life for those most innocent of all.” But not everyone on the religious right believes that Lila Rose is acting out God’s will, let alone laying down her life. After all, Lila Rose lies in order to get the footage she seeks. She and her colleagues pose as underage pregnant teens, as sex traffickers, as statutory rapists….
Read More…ish memorial chapels in and around New York City openly offer cremation in phone conversations. Researching this article, I discovered that cremation was a part of the recent history of my own family. Cremation has inarguably become a part of contemporary Jewish life, perhaps for the better. “I just don’t feel it’s right that the dead should take up space on the planet that could be used for the living,” explains Linda Winters, sixty-eight, a reti…
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…ionships between individuals, but is more easily disseminated to a greater number of people. We experience AI as a crisis because, like the rabbis of the Talmud, we actually have conflicting needs and desires. We crave the efficiency of AI because it can save time and effort, helping us write emails, make phone calls, and recall and summarize information. At the same time, we’re seeking human connection when we do reach out, and AI fails to provid…
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…e. As he told it, one day Frank and a partner “did statistics on Christian numbers” and decided that it was a huge market to tap into. According to Frank, in their first year alone (2008), they did over $250,000 in sales, and the J.D.T. line is only growing. In February the New York Times published R.M. Schneiderman’s article “Flock Is Now a Fight Team in Some Ministries” about the “growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed m…
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…r every single baby legally aborted God will require the blood of the same number of people, which is between 30-50 million Americans!” he writes. (NB: this “pro-life” position bears more of a relationship to a book on numerology than the Book of Numbers.) Anti-marriage equality crusader Bishop Harry Jackson, who is African American, urges readers to vote for Romney “as a statement of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.” While King was sitting in the…
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…become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the phone to Sarah Palin, and counsel her about her kids’ activity on Facebook. Bristol Palin found time from her “Dancing with the stars” practice to get on Facebook with her sister Willow to ride on a friend who had the chutzpah to say “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is failing so hard right now.” Willow’s response was to call the poster a gay slur, and Bristol jumping in the fray to r…
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