Religion Dispatches
…Democrats, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders: “I am a strong advocate of a Medicare-for-all single-payer program.” Yes, Obama should apologize for misleading purchasers of cheap policies by insisting that if they like their current coverage, they can keep it. He needs to take his licks on that. But the right answer is not to cave on the fundamental principle of shared risk. The right answer is to say, “Yes, I spoke too broadly about keeping what you have….
Read More…le compete for political power or economic gain. At one point he links self-interest with violence.” Imagine that!! The pursuit of individual self-interest generates violence? Not in our favorite pundit’s Panglossian vision of how capitalism works. Brooks insists on capitalism’s wonderworking power to generate public good by harnessing private greed. He chides Francis for failing to honor the “obvious truth that the qualities that do harm can ofte…
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…friar, sits in the backseat while I ride shotgun next to Jeff Millsap, a 40-year-old community activist. We are headed to the Tohono O’odham Nation, the third largest reservation in the country and an area only a little smaller than the state of Connecticut. The back of the SUV has been packed with water, Gatorade, crackers, socks, clothes, and medical supplies. As the sky gradually turns from black to indigo, we start gazing into the brush along…
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…ing Commission in March. Newman’s plan instead centers on the same death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy of obstructionism and nuisance complaints that they’d waged against Tiller’s clinic for years before the murder. They had already begun this winter, with public challenges about whether Burkhart had the correct permits for her renovation—“these stupid regulations” Newman derided, but which he nonetheless used as a weapon—and forthcoming probes abou…
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…1967, at the Pentagon; cruising D.C. streets in a sound truck (with my four-year-old son beside me), to turn out votes for Bobby Kennedy in 1968. On the evening of April 3, Dr. King spoke to a crowd in Memphis: “I’ve been to the mountaintop… And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” Echoes of Moses. By the next night, he was dead. By noon the…
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…re he graduated from another Southern Baptist college in Missouri, and a 22-year-old aspiring minister from Philadelphia who quotes Proverbs, declares his love for God—and laments the recent breakup of his relationship with a boyfriend. They are all members or supporters of Soulforce, an organization that aims to change the hearts of those who use religion to justify discrimination against sexual minorities. Most of the 20-somethings in the crowd…
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…rategy was to hopefully attract what editor Brian McGrory described as “big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers.” But those advertisers did not materialize. And while the site attracted a good-sized readership, without ad clicks it wasn’t generating cash for the Globe, which pulled the plug and gave Allen control of the site, while laying off O’Loughlin and Eagan in the process (editor Theresa Hanafin was reassigned to another desk at the Globe). A…
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…ieve in the potential for God to radically change a person’s life. The once-I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found narrative in Pentecostalism really resonates with inmates. That’s when I decided to focus my research on Pentecostalism, not just religion inside prison. Once you had that preparation under your belt, how did you come to choose the prison in Rio de Janeiro for your work? I found the prison through Rio de Paz, a human right group led by a local…
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…the people of my generation or older do,” said Zimmerman, who is 40. In one-on-one conversations, she said, younger Jews are “questioning the assumption of Israel being connected to Jewish identity.” Last year’s Pew Research Center’s Portrait of Jewish Americans, a major survey of American Jews, found declining attachment to Israel among younger generations, while older Jews are more likely to see “caring about Israel” as an “essential part” of be…
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…lim role models. One of them was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Coach Wooden’s 7-foot-2-inch center at UCLA. In learning more about Kareem (born Lew Alcindor), I came to appreciate the influence that Coach Wooden had had on him during the racially and politically charged period of the late 1960s. I wrote to Coach Wooden as an undergraduate asking for a copy of his famous Pyramid of Success. About a month later I received an autographed copy, along with a ni…
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