Religion Dispatches
…s on TLC, Kody Brown is now being investigated by police in the Utah Valley town of Lehi for bigamy. Under Utah state law, bigamy—a third degree felony—is defined by cohabitation, not by legal marriage. And now comes the real test: did the Browns win enough audience support in just one hour of airtime to generate public resistance against the enforcement of Utah’s stringent anti-bigamy laws? Stay tuned….
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…th,” Steve Inskeep intoned, “is to hold a belief when you have no solid evidence to support it.” Huh? I perked up, suddenly, on bad theology alert. But then I got caught up in the story, worrying how it would go for Maggie Hession and Frances Evans if the Rangers, having come this far, were to lose the big prize. So now they have. And the Giants are coming home to ticker tape. Is anyone going to do a follow-up with the devoted Sisters? And what ab…
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…in 1927, to a concern with systemic problems. The head of the chronically underfunded Memphis Community Fund said in 1931, I am heartily in favor of bigger and better smokestacks, of more beautiful and taller skyscrapers, of ribbons of concrete threading our country. . . But the man or city which becomes intoxicated for the possession of these while hunger dwells unrequited, while the lives of little children are blighted for want of a chance, is…
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…efs and health interests of their employees. The scope of the decision is being tested in further litigation. How far the religious rights of companies like Hobby Lobby and, for that matter, non-profit organizations can go in restricting the availability of contraception and perhaps other medical care of which they do not approve, remains to be seen. The most visible implication has been the way that the Right then used the third party principle t…
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…ent of Hawkins. “Dissenting professors are being purged, non-conforming students are being intimidated, speech is chilled, and academic freedom is on life support.” “Laura” (not her real name), a Wheaton alumna who studies Christian theology, sent RD the following sobering assessment: “Several dimensions of the current situation at Wheaton raise serious doubts as to whether an evangelical Christian liberal arts education is in fact possible.” “The…
Read More…rest that I enjoy to this day. Indeed, Metaxas’ skill as a story-teller is undeniable; I finished the 600-page Bonhoeffer text in under a week. For a while, I viewed Metaxas as he presented himself: as a public intellectual. While he may lean more conservative than I, he nonetheless seemed a model of erudition, a bona fide “man of letters.” Jacob Lupfer describes Metaxas’ public persona well: “He is a well-known and well-liked fixture of the mains…
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…e hinged on the fact that, as a citizen of a member state of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), his right to enter other member states was impinged by discriminatory laws in both states. “I’m not surprised,” says Tomlinson over Skype from the Cayman Islands. “I know the CCJ was going to be cautious. I think they provided important clarification on the status of homosexuals in CARICOM. It’s a good first step.” The court accepted testimony from Beli…
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…ter of the circle: a rabbi, an imam, a woman, a representative of the LGBT community, someone under the age of 25. “One of the things we’ve learned in the moral movement is you never stand alone.” In addition to sending a message to the Senate, the event seemed designed to send a message to the clergy and activists who took part: get used to showing up because there are going to be a lot of reasons to stand up against the Trump administration. “We…
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…tmus test for Catholic politicians, as in the 1984 election when Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro was attacked for being pro-choice. And Pew’s own numbers appear to back this up. According to Pew, women are slightly more likely than men to say that churches should keep out of politics (55 percent vs. 53 percent), and overall 60 percent of Catholics say church should keep out of politics. Women’s church attendance did recover somewhat…
Read More…, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his pouch. Now, there being a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, it follows (so Mr. Pecksniff, and only such admirable men, would have reasoned), that there must also be a special Providence in the alighting of the stone, or stick, or other substance which is aimed at the sparrow. And Mr. Pecksniff’s hook, or crook, having invariably knocked the sparrow on the head and brought him down,…
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