Religion Dispatches
…n, in his post-presidential years, when he could wear a pink tie and speak freely. He was talking in just this way. His “schema,” to use your word, for understanding the world is one of interconnection and relationship, very much in the terms that you describe. Maybe I should send him a copy of the book; here as in so many areas lately he seems to have forgotten what he once knew Maybe you should. And that raises the question—Clinton isn’t talking…
Read More…t crisis in Syria, in which the U.N. is blocked from acting decisively because Russia and China will use their vetoes against any action that imperils Assad, President Obama should call a conclave of the world’s other countries, all of them, and let them together decide on what should be done with regard to saving the people of Syria from its rogue regime. The specific use of chemical weapons should be referred to the World Court for possible tria…
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…ey have this capacity. They think listening is simply waiting for you to pause so I can come in. Speaking of listening, you use stories from your teaching experience to such great effect. It sounds as if teaching for you has been a laboratory… Absolutely. That is exactly the word I would use. And you teach courses in religion, spirituality, so you encounter every kind of opinion. I was so interested in that encounter you describe with the dogmatic…
Read More…ive use amongst women of the Kassena-Nankana ethnic group in Ghana. She focuses on a study of contraceptive use and childbearing amongst women who attended evangelical churches: To their amazement, they found that female Christian converts were three times as likely to use family planning as women who retained their traditional African faith, and had significantly smaller families. The churches certainly didn’t promote family planning. But, despit…
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…y of these) could form a new foundation for thinking about the connections between alcohol use and spirituality; they could also create new spiritual practices that do not require a confession of powerlessness, particularly for those who have experienced pervasive social dynamics that conspire to deny them access to cultural and material power in their lives. Men and women living in poverty, the preferential children of God in liberation theologie…
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…provision, even against blatant offenders like North Carolina’s infamous House Bill 2. But that didn’t thwart an outsized reaction led by Texas and nearly two dozen other Republican-run states, which collectively sued the federal government for daring to use its education agency to advise schools nationwide on emerging best practices. A district judge ruled in favor of those states and blocked the guidance in August. Given the arrival of a command…
Read More…the Interfaith Alliance’s State of Belief radio show, once again religious freedom means freedom for everybody, not just the people we like. That ought to be an obvious statement, but apparently it takes some spelling out for modern conservatives. It would be nice to say that spelling it out might have some effect, but movement conservatives have demonstrated anything these days, it’s that they aren’t much interested in consistency, or logic, or e…
Read More…ecades,” a false statement that even got it embroiled in litigation, and caused a group of Cincinnati-area nuns to call on it “to stop making the false claim that Congressman Steve Driehaus (OH-01) voted to expand federal funding of abortion.” Similarly, Charmaine Yoest of AUL falsely called the final health care law “the biggest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.” Driehaus lost, as did about half of the House Democratic pro-life caucus, alt…
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…ent, as old as the notion of a country devoted to the impossible ideals of freedom from the governmental establishment of religion and freedom for citizens’ religious expression—might benefit from continued examination of the various afterlives of this strange date. Certainly, on the brink of Halloween, with cartoon “witches” popping up all over, the reverberations from O’Donnell’s claims emphasize how difficult it is for those who self-identify r…
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…nfession with a priest. However, it has seemed easy enough for the average user to misunderstand the developers’ intention that the app be used as an incentive to go to church. Indeed, enough that Vatican officials were moved to issue a statement yesterday making clear that use of the Confession app—or any technological devise—cannot substitute for the sacrament properly offered by a Roman Catholic priest. Kreager is quick to affirm the Vatican’s…
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