Religion Dispatches
…rch data for the New York Times and comes up with some fun statistics about, say, the anxieties of pregnant women (“can pregnant women eat shrimp?” is a popular search query in the US) or the ratio of heart-related to penis-related searches (67:100 for those keeping score). This Sunday, Stephens-Davidowitz turned his attention to God. Some of the patterns he documents are predictable, such as the steep reduction in “Google searches for churches,”…
Read More…lizing notions of homoerasure and homohysteria (McCormack and Eric Anderson, b), and examining the intersection of identity conflict and new social movement theory, we highlight four strategies that participants use to negotiate the dissonance of living with conflicting identities in a context of religious homophobia: (1) privileging their Islamic identities and rejecting homosexuality as a legitimate sexual identity; (2) rejecting Islam and accep…
Read More…refugees making up a quarter of the country’s population. “We know hundreds, thousands of LGBT refugees are coming across, but if we start counting, it could be used against them and us. It’s better they slip unnoticed into Lebanon. Prejudice against gay men and women doesn’t stop at the border. The trouble is, they are being arrested and abused here in Lebanon, too.” Anglican Communion: Archbishop of Canterbury calls special gathering to prevent…
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…t to the U.S. All this peace and quiet is about to disappear. On December 8, 2010, Bishop David L. Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay concluded a two-year investigation into the validity of the apparitions at the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, making the Wisconsin site the 13th Marian apparition site in the world to be formally recognized since the Vatican established a new approval process in 1978. Although the site has attracted a steady trick…
Read More…thirty-six hours with no food or water. Then, on the afternoon of October 8, 2009, Ray gathered all the people at the Angel Valley Retreat for a Warrior Sweat which was scheduled to last for two or more hours. More than fifty “grandfather stones” were brought into the sweat lodge and by the end of the ordeal two were dead, one more would die without recovering consciousness, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the nu…
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…lamic unity,” in which use of “Islamic law” became a popular rhetoric. Rabb, too, noted, “Historically, Shari’ah served as a means for political dissent against arbitrary rule.” “So shari’ah became a battle cry of resistance,” Salaymeh says. “It’s used by certain political groups to claim they are not being represented, or that their government is not representative of the people. So it’s more about representation and identity than it is about spe…
Read More…ns very widespread—59 percent of Americans believe in God without any doubt,” adding that, “Atheism is barely growing,” with 1% in 1962 and 3% in 2012 indicating no belief in God. The report raises important questions about the relationship between religious affiliation, religious identity, and religiosity in general in the United States that may be addressed in future work by Hout and Fischer on generational and political factors in affiliation,…
Read More…whom are from Virginia) will be able to bring suit against SGM. On May 29, Susan Burke and William O’Neil, lawyers for the plaintiffs, filed a motion for Burrell to reconsider her decision. They plan to appeal if this request is denied. Burke has also stated that “Going forward with a civil lawsuit does not in any way prevent criminal actions—perhaps may even make it more likely.” The personal and organizational fallout for SGM and in the church…
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…uddenly in charge again after running against the tariff and the Silver Act, they, like today’s GOP, were in the hook to make good on their promises of returning America to better, simpler days without government interference. Then, the worst depression of the nineteenth century, the Panic of 1893, hit. The Democrats put all their efforts into repealing the Silver Act, which it blamed for the country’s financial difficulties. But when that didn’t…
Read More…remark made 12 years ago by neoconservative-friendly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there real…
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