Religion Dispatches
…first Pride celebration, which will run concurrently with the country’s Emancipation and Independence celebrations from August 1-8. …
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…rticipation in role-playing fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons. In August of 2014, thousands of Yezidis were murdered in northwestern Iraq by ISIL militants, who accused them of practicing Satan worship. Buddhist militants in Myanmar have justified the burning of mosques by portraying the Muslim Rohingya minority as particularly violent. Although it’s difficult to imagine the pagan Viking as a vulnerable minority, the characterization of t…
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…website of “The Response—A call to prayer for a nation in crisis” (set for August 6 in Houston), names some of those unsolvable problems: “financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters.” One of the endorsers for Gov. Perry’s event is historical document collector David Barton, who often cites the Founding Fathers in attempts to legitimate his central thesis that the United States is, and was intended to be, a “Christian Nation.”…
Read More…es provide contraception coverage, which would otherwise go into effect on August 1, is now blocked while the rest of the case is decided. Kane’s conclusion doesn’t read like that of an ideologue. And there are elements of his other writing which are really spot-on, even at points inspiring. In a 2002 speech to the Denver Bar Association (opens as .doc), Kane called for far-reaching reform to the legal system: The legal system’s stubborn adherence…
Read More…the bill would not have voted down an attempt to move the amendment to the August ballot instead of the November one. If there really is a problem, why not fix it as soon as possible? Why not vote at the start of the next school year instead of waiting three months into it? The answer is simple: partisan politics. These Republican legislators, mimicking the national trend over the past two decades, are praying that the amendment will bring conserv…
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At the end of August, our nation witnessed the first full public conversation about health care reform and the Gospel of the Poor. In the celebration of Senator Kennedy’s life and accomplishments, clergy and laity joined in acknowledging that the Senator had made access to health care for all—regardless of wealth or station—his life’s work based on his understanding of the Gospels, his Roman Catholic faith, and his love for humanity. It was a ver…
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…n had been ill with Alzheimer’s disease for the past few years. He died on August 4 in Tel Aviv. Friends talk about Jesus may not be performed on the stage in the foreseeable future, but Jesus will not soon disappear from the larger Israeli cultural state. In fact, Jesus has just been brought back into the cultural conversation by two recent scholarly books: Tsvi Sadan’s Flesh on Our Flesh: Jesus of Nazareth in Zionist Thought and Netta Stahl’s Ts…
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…r people’s children, Walters appears far more concerned with grabbing microphones and hopping in front of the nearest television camera than actually providing students with a quality education. His staunchest supporters are turning on him because he has simply failed to do his job, avoiding any meetings with teachers and administrators, and apparently barricading himself behind locked doors and armed guards. Walters is so extreme that 17 state le…
Read More…him telling 1,000 Christians in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, last August that there is “a war between Christians and homosexuals.” Uganda: Anglican Leaders Back Anti-Gay Bill, Reject Criticism from Canterbury While President Museveni deliberates and activists urge him not to sign the draconian anti-gay bill passed by Parliament, the head of the Anglican Church in Uganda has rejected a letter from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York tha…
Read More…ng irrational fear of Islam. Gaffney, appearing on Glenn Beck’s program in August 2010, claimed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, then one of the organizers of the Park51 (a.k.a. “Ground Zero Mosque”) project, is part of this plot: Muslim Brotherhood started in 1920 in Egypt, thereabouts. And its main effort is to restore the call caliphate, through stealthy means, in the West. It is very much present here. In fact, any Muslim American organization in…
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