Religion Dispatches
…nly encourage more and more absurd statements. The recent post on Jesus seems especially insensitive, considering who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an awa…
Read More
…ewish ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many…
Read More
…nted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears o…
Read More
…ves. Over time, India’s social fabric incorporated Muslim and Christian norms, and ironically, many Hindu leaders embraced some of those norms in an attempt to re-interpret their religious scriptures from a modernist perspective. As a result, Hinduism itself became interpreted as more rigid and doctrinarian than its scriptural roots, and generations of Indians became Christianized (though not necessarily Christian) through India’s Christian paroch…
Read More
…tion frayed and mainstream Republicans were eclipsed, the bishops found themselves aligned with an increasingly fractured, dysfunctional party. This inevitable process of party dissolution cumulated in the triumph of Trumpism, which, because of the bishops’ eagerness to secure their socially conservative anti-abortion, “religious liberty” agenda, now carries, albeit uneasily, the “banner of Catholic teaching”: In short, Catholic bishops who signed…
Read More
…he Genesis account of creation. A post from EveryStudent.com; the site claims to be “a safe space to explore questions about life and God”—especially, it seems, if you want someone to convince you that God is real. And an article from something called the Christian Courier, which appears to be the publication of a Stockton, CA-based ministry. Clearly, Google’s algorithms here are favoring reassurances for the theologically shaken, rather than argu…
Read More…election, “compared gay people to monkeys and said he would rather shoot himself in the testicles before his son married a man.” Romania: Report on ‘traditional values’ alliance with U.S. groups to oppose LGBT rights Sian Norris reports for Open Democracy’s 50.50 on Romania’s “backlash against LGBT rights,” which is led by “conservative and religious forces determined to protect ‘traditional family’ values,” with support from Christian conservativ…
Read More
…licans with overtaxing Americans to spend money on unneeded, big-ticket items. They massacred them in the mid-terms and sent Grover Cleveland back to the White House in 1892. Suddenly 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 cen…
Read More…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…
Read More
…earing all American Muslims with a broad brush. It’s not the American Muslims themselves who are radical, they insist, it’s American Muslim organizations and mosques in America that are carrying out this secret plot in which ordinary American Muslims are either unwitting dupes or victims. Yet they frequently slip from that defensive posture and make broad statements about Muslims. King told Gaffney on his radio program, for example, that American…
Read More