Religion Dispatches
…n, activist and scholar on Islam and gender. All the more to share, all the more to keep a record, all the more then to celebrate, as I do today the next stage in the transition of the human spirit from the planes of the mundane everyday ordinary to the throne of the divine in celebration of the divinity within our selves. Feel free to join me….
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…ed on” in Christ. The orthodoxy of a “Christian society” was the source of spiritual and social stability in which moral society and true religion would thrive and be protected. New England was a “City on a Hill” whose witness would transform corrupt religion of the Old World. Without government sanctions, spiritual heresy and moral chaos would result. This would, for example, require the exile of heretics like Williams, and the execution of heret…
Read More…ricans who have spoken on behalf of human rights and equality, including a number of religious figures: Bishop Christopher Senyonjo of Uganda; Cardinal Peter Iodwo Appiah Turkoson of Ghana, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; and James Tengatenga, former Anglican Bishop for Southern Malawi. Channel 4 has reported on the challenges facing LGBT Africans seeking asylum in the U.K. Vatican: Is there a Pro-LGBT ‘Francis Effect’…
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…elical Christian Rick Warren that “Corinthians says that we are all of one spirit, and that “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it.” But it also says, “if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” On this World AIDS day, it is the stories of overcoming, and not just illness, that the world needs to hear.” World AIDS Day is rife with interreligious services; and religious organizations are active internationally in both preventio…
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Over the last year or two, I’ve become an unironic, unapologetic fan of reality TV. I know the criticisms—they dumb us down, they elevate public humiliation—but what I’m really interested in is the way shows like Spike’s Joe Schmo Show or VH1’s I Love Money turn into morality plays about the value of friendship and loyalty. In the best reality shows, the initial rush of schadenfreude is gradually replaced with a genuine affection for the “good gu…
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…who is might be willing to give Christianity a second look—those who are “spiritual-but-not-religious” and the “church alumni club.” And those who might be completely post-religious and just want to read a good story about interesting people in the past. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I always want my readers—of my books, blogs, or articles—to say, “I’ve never really seen the world from that angle before…
Read More…p as a kind of parallel system of okaying a food-provider according to the spirit of Judaism. These are tentative but welcome steps. The ancient rabbis taught that since the destruction of the Temple a Jew’s own table is his or her sacred altar, and should be subject to the same degree of sanctity. Kashrut is not meant to be a system of arbitrary food taboos, but a discipline that elevates the human drive to eat above the kind of desecrations Agri…
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…e caricatures offered up as if they were the truth. When intelligent people indulge in the latter, they’ve let the lampooning spirit carry them too far….
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…e that the God of all peoples wants all to be treated as equally valuable and as embodiments of God’s image on Earth, the failure of Muslims and Arab to disassociate themselves more publicly and forcefully is itself a problem that must be addressed with honesty and public confrontation, in a spirit of mutual respect and caring for each other. To do less would be to dishonor the God of the universe. We in the Jewish world who continually and public…
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…ired word of God. In its extreme form, KJVO Baptists argue that the divine spirit breathed through Wycliffe and Tyndale (but not Douai) and culminated in the foreordained event of the 1611 “Authorized” English Bible. A strange conclusion to draw about an anti-Calvinist Bible. For those who were not tempted by the Episcopalian or fundamentalist options, the need for new English Bibles continued to be felt. Now they are legion: the New International…
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