Religion Dispatches
…pt has an army of one million men armed with 1500 Abram Tanks which are America’s best. We sold them to Egypt along with hundreds of our latest and greatest fighter jets because Egypt was controlled by Mubarak who was America’s friend. Can you imagine what Israel faces with Iran, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Russia coming after them? The prophet Ezekiel clearly predicted this battle thousands of years ago and you are watching the players get into p…
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…ar plan and go start a nation….’ And in Christianity Today he connected American history to ancient Israel and biblical law: The true roots of America go all the way back to the ancient Hebrew republic. You can trace those roots at Jamestown back to Europe as well. This is the trail of freedom that leads us all the way back to the ancient Hebrews under Moses where he first delivered those laws of liberty—when he told them to elect leaders, men of…
Read More…rchbishop of Boston in 2002 because of his perceived mishandling of the clerical sex-abuse crisis, was reportedly the person in Rome most forcefully supporting Bishop Lori’s proposal. Both Cardinal Law and Archbishop Lori (he was appointed to the prestigious see of Baltimore in March) have long supported women’s religious orders that have distanced themselves from the LCWR. Cardinal Law, 80, staffs his residence in Rome with the Mercy Sisters of A…
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…tand and implement sustainable and eco-conscious ways of living.” And, the San Francisco-based American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA) hosted a sold-out, green-themed Ramadan retreat this past September to help participants learn more about the connections between Islam and nature. In the UK, the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environment Sciences, established in the 1980s, is developing proactive and protective opinions on en…
Read More…for gays and lesbians may have won the round at the ballot box, but in the San Francisco courtroom where the legal battle to overturn Prop. 8 wraps up its first week, religion has been largely absent. Religious arguments don’t hold a lot of legal water, so anti-marriage equality proponents are forced to use their secular arguments, and reading reports from the courtroom (since the U.S. Supreme Court nixed video coverage of the trial), they’re leak…
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…deny it is a violation of core American values: Freedom is not only for Americans, but we think of it as something of our special inheritance, fought for at a great price, and a heritage to be guarded now. We are stewards of this gift, not only for ourselves but for all nations and peoples who yearn to be free. Catholics in America have discharged this duty of guarding freedom admirably for many generations. Even as the Catholic hierarchy bewails…
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…ce a story gets told it calcifies… What Europeans don’t quite get about Americans is the nature of Christianity here. In Europe, people (whether they’re believers or not) still associate the church—whether Calvinist or Catholic, or anything else—with clear authority figures. Whereas in America it’s much closer to, well… capitalism. One thing that struck me, traveling through Texas, was that you look at billboards along the freeways, and the way th…
Read More…Jtatic (“Bishop of the Poor”) in the Tzotzil Mayan language. While often caricatured as a “red bishop” who preached a communist message of class struggle that supported the armed Zapatistas, Bishop Ruiz consistently espoused a vision of nonviolence and peaceful mediation. In 1999 he founded the Father Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre and his life as a whole reminds us that the Latin American Church has been and still is the Church of the…
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…er late husband was instrumental in organizing Washington for Jesus and America for Jesus rallies in the 1980s, which focused on similar themes to those behind The Response.) Thompson added, “There are so many deep things we don’t understand. We don’t understand really what put this president in place… it’s been layers of it, but we really don’t know what’s going on.” Spiritual Warfare, Signs Wonders, and Heretics? The lineup of speakers at The Re…
Read More…, drug-smuggling and “free-love,” guru Baghwan Shree Rajneesh gathered thousands of followers to a headquarters in rural Oregon. Conflict with the natives yielded criminal charges against Rajneesh’s henchmen for wiretapping, arson, attempted murder and salmonella bioterrorism resulting in 751 cases of acute gastroenteritis. Paul Erdman went on an acid trip, changed his name to Love Jesus and founded a patriarchal commune in Seattle’s Queen Anne ne…
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