Religion Dispatches
…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…
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…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…
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…to see it, for someone to look at something outside of themselves.” A San Francisco native who started out as a youth pastor to at-risk children, McBride now devotes much of his time to combating gun violence and police brutality in Oakland. Ferguson is a sort of mecca for the minister, the birthplace of a new way of resistance and the “most transformative” experience of his life. Before 2014, McBride was not an activist, he explained. He was a s…
Read More…e radical nature of Mayor Annise Parker’s commitment to imposing the full “San Francisco Style” Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, etc. agenda. … We have a sin-sick city and we need the power of God through Jesus Christ changing lives and changing City Hall! Conservatives have jumped on the issue as evidence of their long-standing claims of government overreach, government hostility to Christians, and the ultimate result of LGBT rights: infrin…
Read More…ughter Bella was hospitalized.) Organizers said they had distributed 1,800 tickets, and the pews in the church were nearly full, with several hundred, if not nearly a thousand people in attendance. Gingrich was the only candidate to appear; Staver, the “forum’s” moderator took pains to point out that they had invited the other candidates. Santorum and Ron Paul had commitments outside of Florida. Mitt Romney, the candidate Staver and other leaders…
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…It just creates a very sordid and unsavory picture. Also, it took place in San Francisco, a city that has always been mythicized as a white space. You had a white pastor, so many white bohemian liberal-to-radical members involved quite prominently and that becomes a big part of the ethos. That this is a “free love” church, that it was a new age-y kind of confab, when it’s really coming from the heart of Pentecostal, charismatic spirituality. Black…
Read More…h friends at the Wupatki National Park which is exactly on a line from the San Francisco Peaks to the Hopi reservation. The day was clear, cloudless, until about one o’clock in the afternoon. Clouds began to roil over the peaks to the southwest and by two o’clock thunder could be heard in the distance. By 2:30 we were soaked to the skin by a “sudden” thunderstorm headed northeast to the Hopi reservation. I remembered it was the day of the Hopi Sna…
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…de in American jurisprudence. Here we have an openly gay (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) federal judge substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who I promise you would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution. We call on the Supreme Court and Congress to protect the people’s right to vote for marriage,” she said. Newt Gingrich, a former Congr…
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…in it at all. When I moved here I didn’t know anybody who went to church; San Francisco is apparently the least churchgoing city in America. In Jesus Freak you write about going around the country, to talk about your work with food pantries, and change in churches, and meeting many people who say something like, “Oh, it’s wonderful what you do, but we could never do that here…!” It’s this weird thing. Before I became one, I didn’t understand ther…
Read More…ublic health researchers working in cooperation with Mormon lay leaders at San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance project. But with its explicit call for improved treatment of LGBT people within Mormon communities, the mormonsandgays.com site opens new horizons of possibility. Kendall Wilcox, a gay Mormon and maker of the documentary Far Between, “I am encouraged by the fact that the Church is promoting the value of listening to and em…
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