Religion Dispatches
…tholic feminists worked the center aisle to assure everyone that they were welcome to receive Communion: “Marge would want you to do so” was their message. Many did. William Sloan Coffin, a well-known Protestant pastor found his way to the Communion line. The Presbyterian clergy colleague on my left and the Catholic pro-choice leader on my right went up the center aisle for Communion. No bells sounded, no lights flickered, no one was struck off th…
Read More…had invoked canon law to defend his position. Considering the recent (and welcome) coverage of the New York City Police Department’s entirely inappropriate behavior, which as far as we know up till now includes the sustained use of blatantly anti-Muslim propaganda films and frequent spying on everyday college students outside of New York City, Rascoff’s op-ed is timely. But it is tackling complicated questions, for which it isn’t easy to find ans…
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…tories. In a nasty campaign season and a still-sluggish economy, they’re a welcome reprieve. And it’s okay to draw religious lessons from them, if that’s what you’re inclined to do. But those lessons should not be about a vindictive and arbitrary God who favors some athletes over others, but should be about the capacity of religion and spirituality to cause us to be better people, however we understand what that means. What’s miraculous is not how…
Read More…nd irresponsible this is. There wasn’t much fake religion, which is always welcome. This president doesn’t like to pander in that way, I gather. But there was the odiferous religion of nationalism. There was a distinct pong of American exceptionalism (“ours is a moral power,” “indispensable nation”), there was the blooded scent of saber-rattling (Iran), and there was the crisp masculine tang of “America will always win” on a level (trade) playing…
Read More…al Mormonism is an entirely different story—and that’s a change LDS people welcome. In his ignorance, Siegel follows Harold Bloom, who weighed in with an astoundingly incoherent and “dread”-ful jeremiad against Romney’s Mormonism last November. And Maureen Dowd, who continues to outsource her columns on Romney’s Mormonism to purveyors of smack and sensationalism, like Bill Maher and the authors of the latest Romney tell-all biography. Polygamy r…
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…een takes. The Christmas lights in the commercial were all LED, so: you’re welcome, Environment. Can I use plastic bags again now? RM: I was forced to take part in this OBJECTIONABLE ad by TWO AMERICAN HOMOSEXUAL ATHEISTS whose sole goal was to further their agenda of HATE against MONOTHEISM! An erudite scholar of Islam and sexuality commented on the website of academic excellence, Facebook, that you two guys are just a “little gay” at the end of…
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…t Mormon scholars like Bringhurst believe that this is a natural, and even welcome, vetting process of both Mormons as American and a Mormon as the chief American. (In this vetting process, one belief that America will soon discover—and a belief that the Mormon candidates could make more of—is that the LDS Church counts the Constitution as divinely inspired. Thus the Mormon canon of sacred scriptures includes the central document of America’s poli…
Read More…lly-occurring human trait that is not abhorrent to God. Some congregations welcome participation by openly gay people who maintain chastity. Other Mormons, however, feel that it is unjust and impossible to expect gay Mormons to abstain from intimate relationships their entire lifetimes. The LDS Church’s recent investments in anti-marriage-equality campaigns like Proposition 8 have created deep divides in Mormon families and communities, giving tho…
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…y, as the principle values of the society they want to see established. Whether or not that is what is happening here, there is a welcome warmth in the suggestion….
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…words, it had been just nine years since a majority of Americans began to welcome voices from beyond into their homes, less than twenty since the earliest regional “radio-phonic” transmissions, and already it seemed perfectly natural for families to sit for hours in their living rooms, ears titled toward the hearth of a talking wooden box. Corwin was more responsible than anyone for filling those talking boxes with words that mattered. When the N…
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