Religion Dispatches
…window of time between the U.S. elections in November and the inaugural in January?” Last week, the Family Research Council announced “that that the European Court of Human Rights has granted permission for the organization to defend Ireland’s ban on the practice of abortion.” The organization will be represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and organizations. In a press release, Bill Saunders, FRC’s Human…
Read More…evolution. An Evolving Creationism But Don McLeroy says he has evolved. In January 2008, as I was reporting on the “strengths and weaknesses” controversy, he wrote me an e-mail in which he referenced the words of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “Here is an example of my strategy to point out to my friends on the board the inconsistency of holding a completely naturalistic scientific system with other personal belief systems…
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…tly fired. The hearings took place this fall and have been continued until January 6. For now, while he waits for the outcome of the hearings, Freshwater is selling Christmas trees. Last week, he said he believes the district is retaliating against him because he advocated for “critical analysis” of evolution in 2003. “They’ve marked me as a religious—I don’t know if I want to use this phrase about myself—but as a religious fanatic,” Freshwater sa…
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…d to contact Saddleback twice after the teachings were publicized in early January, offering them her book’s findings that 1 Corinthians 7:15—a verse commonly interpreted as applying solely to an unbeliever deserting a believing spouse—provides the biblical grounds for abused wives to consider their union nullified. “The key question is not ‘who walked out’ but ‘who caused the separation?’ I believe I have provided a thorough and comprehensive ref…
Read MoreOn January 21, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four bishops, members of the Society of St. Pius X who broke with Rome over their protests that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council were too progressive. The bishops were excommunicated over twenty years ago after they were consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve without papal permission. The Congregation of Bishops published a decree following the Pope’s remission…
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…hicago church gave an award named for Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Farrakhan in January 2008. Obama’s campaign subsequently issued a statement that distanced him from the NOI’s leader. “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan,” said Obama, echoing Jackson. And so, as Obama campaigned and finally won the presidency of the United States, Walters believes that the reasoning…
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…ce, pluralism, and cooperation.” However, a quick Google search turns up a number of criticisms of this letter as disingenuous. I consistently attend interfaith events where my understanding of Islam is claimed to be either wrong or not representative of what vast majorities of Muslims think. The basis for this claim is that what I’m suggesting is not what is being shown on CNN. What this does is construct a Muslim identity that creates a threaten…
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…Power, and the Future of the World By Michelle Goldberg (Penguin, 2009) On January 20, the first self-identified feminist was named President of the United States. In his first presidential act of feminist solidarity Barack Obama repealed the Mexico City Policy—a.k.a. “the global gag rule”—a Reagan-era policy that denies aid to non-governmental organizations “which perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” The global ga…
Read More…uestions about the role of religion in civil society that might be even more important than who controls Congress in January….
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…rican evangelicals and anti-gay African clergy, told this reporter back in January, after Warren finally repudiated the bill in December 2009: “Ugandans,” and Ssempa in particular, “are demanding an apology from Warren; the question is why are they demanding an apology? Warren misrepresented what he said in Uganda and is very different that what he is saying now [in the U.S.]” American evangelicals have helped cultivate the homophobic atmosphere i…
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