Religion Dispatches
Opponents decried the Charter as a thinly disguised attack on religious minorities, especially Muslim women […] and to that extent, a sign of Quebec’s lamentable endorsement of a broader Islamophobia that has swept the Western world in the post-9/11 context. The defeat of the government at the polls on 7 April would seem to indicate that the agenda of the Charter has now come to an end.
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The Flood story forces us to grapple with the deeply impersonal forces of the universe that are set against human civilization.
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Why is religion without religion not radical enough? How does mysticism “shake hands” with atheism? What is the difference between worship and idolatry? Elliot R. Wolfson keeps us up all night thinking (and running for the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy) as he talks to RD on the occasion of the publication of his newest book.
Read MoreThe Raelians, who regard the Catholic Church as their sexually repressive nemesis, say they’ve launched Clitoraid to help the victims of female circumcision.
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The battle rages over whether Darren Aronofsky’s popular new film is faithful to the Bible. If nothing else, it’s faithful to the long tradition of interpreting bible stories in a particular historical context.
Read MoreThe crafters of biblical stories knew that people came in variety and accounted for that in their narratives. Not so Aronofsky.
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We taste the bread, we smell the incense; you don’t have to put that down lower because you don’t understand the theological concepts. Don’t feel bad about having an experience involving stained glass windows; that’s not a trivial thing.
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Son of God and Noah don’t just represent two different ways to read Scripture, two different ways to make films, and two different marketing demographics. They also represent two sharply different ways to believe, to be in the world.
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The generous and successful programs of the New Deal weren’t pushed through via the lobbying of savvy, connected and nominally liberal religious advocates, they were underwritten by the “moralistic, idealistic and politically naive” movement known as the Social Gospel.
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This “religious freedom” battle headed to the Supreme Court is largely about abortion, though it’s based on the US Catholic Bishops’ efforts to exploit a small gap in the science that’s long past.
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