In The News: In Sickness and In Wellness
A round-up of recent religion news. Continue Reading →
Tag: washington
Tying Knots
Becky Garrison: In the battle for marriage equality, a federal appeals court and the Washington State legislature delivered both a love letter for same-sex couples and a Valentine’s Day massacre on society, depending on one’s interpretation of civil liberties and the institution of marriage.
On February 7, 2012, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared California’s Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage, to be unconstitutional. By a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel affirmed the lower court judge’s 2010 ruling that Prop. 8 was indeed a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians. (This timeline charts the legal briefs and hearings that transpired since 2008 when Prop 8 went into effect.) Continue Reading →
His Holiness the Dalai Lama Goes to Washington
Amy Levin talks to Robert Barnett about HHDL’s visit.
Prayer flags and American flags are flying side by side as His Holiness the Dalai Lama (HHDL) continues his second week of the Kalachakra, a festival for “world peace,” from July 6-16 in our nation’s capital. The calendar of events began with a celebration of the Dalai Lama’s 76th birthday, followed each day by prayers, dances, daily teachings, and various rituals. The main highlight and most populated event of the festival was a historic “Talk for World Peace,” given by the Lama himself. Sharing the microphone with emcee Whoopi Goldberg, the Dalai Lama addressed as many as 20,000 people who made the pilgrimage to Capitol Hill for the three-hour outdoor event complete with chanting, dancing, and music in addition to the hour and a half speech.
While most Kalachakra attendees spent their $500 to consume priceless messages of inner peace, liberation, and selflessness, there was another mantra brewing – this one given to a different crowd of devotees. On Thursday, July 7th, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) and former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) welcomed His Holiness to Capitol Hill to advise the US on how to spread values of peace and democracy to various nations.
Meetings of good faith between HHDL and US public officials, including presidents, are quite a ritual, but something was different this time around – during this visit, the Dalai Lama no longer holds any formal political power. Just this past March, His Holiness announced his decision to “relinquish his last remaining political powers.” Continue Reading →
Take America Back to What? The Founding Atheists?
For all of the — rather successful — efforts over the past decades to convince the nation that our founders were holy men devoted to keeping God as our national co-pilot (Beck is only the most recent in a long line ahistorical claimers), sometimes Christians have to call it the way they see it. Christian J. Pinto, a documentary filmmaker, isn’t out to give a glorified shine to the constitution-writers. He wants to move America forward to a new faithfulness, not back to those “athiests” who got us started. In his new film, “The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers,” Pinto says that Christians could find better role models than the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and Adams. So who were the Founding Father’s appealing to when they wrote the constitution, if not God? Ultimately Rome, says Pinto, as a means of escaping British rule. Continue Reading →
Praying For Prayer's SakeOn the National Day of Prayer
by Scott Korb
Listen to Scott, contributing editor to The Revealer, talk about the National Day of Prayer on BBC4’s “Sunday.”
As defenders of the National Day of Prayer will tell you, George Washington called for our first day of prayer in 1789: “That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war.” These same people will also point out that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed three such days during the Civil War, most famously on April 30, 1863, to mark what he called a necessary “Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” because “we have forgotten God.” Victories in Gettysburg and Vicksburg the following summer occasioned the 1864 proclamation; 1865’s National Day of Prayer was held June 1, in Lincoln’s memory. Continue Reading →
Praying For Prayer’s SakeOn the National Day of Prayer
by Scott Korb
Listen to Scott, contributing editor to The Revealer, talk about the National Day of Prayer on BBC4’s “Sunday.”
As defenders of the National Day of Prayer will tell you, George Washington called for our first day of prayer in 1789: “That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war.” These same people will also point out that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed three such days during the Civil War, most famously on April 30, 1863, to mark what he called a necessary “Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” because “we have forgotten God.” Victories in Gettysburg and Vicksburg the following summer occasioned the 1864 proclamation; 1865’s National Day of Prayer was held June 1, in Lincoln’s memory. Continue Reading →