Religion Dispatches
…cts. If you were to pump out, day after day, anti-Russian sentiment on the news networks, and only ever focus on the bad things Russians do, and never the good, then I imagine eventually you would create an outcome that included violence against Russians and thundering political rhetoric warning us of the threat within. What I mean to say is, even after the September 11th attacks no politician dared discuss the kinds of proposals that are now comm…
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…rage of Life Issues calls out journalists for their ongoing blackout of pro-life news and demands reporters live up to the standards of journalistic integrity by covering life issues. The Alliance complains that the mainstream TV networks devoted less than two minutes to the march over the last four years and that papers like the Post routinely downplay the march. It’s true that coverage of the march does wax and wane. A march in the first year of…
Read More…al Christianity in the universities. Second, conservatives have done an all-too-effective job of framing LGBT justice as a wedge issue and trying to confine media attention to it—that is, to the one issue that does maximum mischief in disrupting left-liberal coalitions. Wallis has played his part in speaking for the rightward side of this wedge, but people on the other side sometimes play their roles too. Believe Out Loud seems to be trying to avo…
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…using their powers to protect mortals from other, more evil vampires. Self-identified, real-world vampires (strange as they might seem) may currently be more trusted than the blood-sucking banks, making Rodgers’ victory over Wells Fargo a teachable moment. Many lament that America has become “tribalized,” with individuals thinking solely in terms of their own interests and identity groups. But perhaps as outrage over financial irresponsibility co…
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…ry and alternative medicine (CAM), accounting for 11.2 percent of total out-of-pocket expenditures on health care. Is this wasted money? Does prayer heal? Does homeopathy work? Is acupuncture effective? Is Ayurvedic medicine really medicine at all? And what should I do about my lower back pain and stuffed up nose? Most physicians trained in modern scientific medicine are quite skeptical of CAM and other spirituality-based healing practices, but co…
Read More…ation. Last year, although my children are no longer small, I enjoyed a mom-comes-home-from-abroad version of this and shopped for new prayer rugs for each of them; new sarongs for the boys and extended family men; a fancy, Malaysian formal prayer outfit with songket skirt for my (then) only grandson; new prayer scarves for my daughters. I almost laugh when I think about it, because all this “Islamic paraphernalia” is marketed at this time, the sa…
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…enough to convince one village or community to abandon the practice. Whole networks of communities must come together to advocate for change. This model was the exact outcome of a human rights curriculum introduced in Senegal by the organization Tostan. While not initially focused on eradicating FGC, Tostan realized that when women learned about human rights, they came to the decision to end FGC on their own and began to advocate for far reaching,…
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…be true? Yes. But it is incredibly unlikely—just as unlikely as misogynist-in-chief Sam Alito allowing his wife to decide which flag is flown for days at his house, openly supporting the insurrection. The story would be wild enough if it ended there—and grounds for Democrats to impeach the man. After all, here’s a Supreme Court Justice openly signaling, by hoisting this flag, that he—or at least his household—supports the overthrow of the democra…
Read More…d a hand in bringing on Fred Davis to develop the crypto-quirky Huntsman-on-a-motorcycle videos the campaign released to introduce the candidate back in June, I’m worried. And my worry is not eased by the fact that no one in the Huntsman campaign communications department has fixed the media glitch we noticed here more than a month ago: the official Huntsman campaign website still does not show up in the first page of Google results from a “Huntsm…
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…rum for Theological Exploration conference. In this conversation about her new book, we talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, its connection to queer womanist theology, and her transformative experiences on the ground in Ferguson and Baltimore. Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology Pamela Lightsey Pickwick Publications (September, 2015) Your new book is Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology. Can you explain the notion of queering…
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