Religion Dispatches
…e. The government has no business trying to convince you otherwise. You’re welcome to sit down. We invited you to stand, but no one made you. But if you do believe, I would ask you, personally and not on behalf of the government, to take a moment to thank Him, for the many gifts you believe you have received from Him, including the opportunity to pursue an education in a country explicitly founded on the belief that we are endowed by our Creator w…
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…fter passing through a military checkpoint. Christians and Muslims are not welcome. As an occupying power, Israel is required by international law to preserve the status quo and to act for the benefit of the local civilian population. But Israel claimed security reasons for its Jewish-only access. “These are Muslim holy sites,” explained Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, head of the Palestinian Shari’a Islamic courts. Tamimi remembers praying in the Bilal Mos…
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…ionships, rather than particular acts.” It also urges faith communities to promote sex education, reproductive rights, and full inclusion of women and LGBT people in religious life and society at large. “We need to move religion away from saying homosexuality is wrong, or masturbation or abortion, or oral sex, or sex outside marriage,” Haffner explained in an interview with RD. “The point is, what is the quality of the relationship?” While recent…
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…very idea of finding a tent in the house was so foreign, and truthfully so welcome, that it could only come from a source that was Wholly Other. Irrespective of anything that might be regarded as proof, at least until my father announced plans for an upcoming camping trip, that novelty and unforeseen possibility had no other name for me than Santa. “Sorry, I didn’t really get to talking about God,” Hook told me when I went up to congratulate him a…
Read More…ting federal hate crimes laws comes too late from my friend’s son – but is welcome future protection for our community. Those on the religious right, however, have been sounding the alarms over the measure for months, claiming it will “silence” the Christians who want to preach against homosexuality as a “sin.” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council called the legislation a “thought-crimes bill” that would give “special rights” to homosexuals…
Read More…Park51 controversy or the Peter King hearings. So, Rep. King, any time you actually want to learn something about Islam, I suggest you take a local class, and I’d welcome you. You may also want to brush up on basic concepts like evidence before making an argument….
Read More…as one of President Obama’s “spiritual advisors,” and was one of the early promoters of, and advisors to, Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. But on this issue, Wallis seems to have lost—if he ever actually had—his influence. As E.J. Dionne (also a fan of government partnerships with faith-based groups) wondered in the Washington Post yesterday, in reacting to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal: Will President Obama welcome…
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…State Department’s new initiative for an office of religious engagement is welcome. Over in the UK, I’ve been arguing for years that there needs to be better engagement between politics, religion, and religion research, and I founded the Westminster Faith Debates with former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, to advance this very aim. We bring researchers, religious spokespeople and policy makers into dialogue. A state department which talks of “reli…
Read More…is coming or not regardless of the ax or the dance. The dances are held to welcome the rain. One summer I was hiking with 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…
Read More…justice and mercy it inspires.” God, it turns out, has already been quite welcome in Charlotte, from opening and closing prayers to references in several speakers’ remarks. But that is not enough for the word-counters at Fox News, who demand to know why the number of uses of “God” has dropped. In response, Sen. Dick Durbin took on the insinuation that the platform revision somehow proved that Democrats are anti-God: Well, I can just basically tel…
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