Nate Silver ponders the apparent contradiction in polls showing a majority of people claiming to be pro-choice but also a large majority supporting Roe v. Wade.
Part of the meaning of Easter is to be wary how we judge. We do not see things the way God does, and we are extremely likely to get things wrong.
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” Jesus insists, going on to side with the scapegoats themselves. The Gospel is clear. I am with the one cast out. He became one with the rejected and the cast out. And thus he suffered the same fate. This is not to endorse sacrificial theology but to condemn it.
…there are signs that clouds are gathering on another front, between male clergy and a growing number of female clergy who hold more progressive views across the board and who have significantly different political priorities than their male colleagues.
The Guardian posed this question to four writers this past week. The question mirrors similar concerns in the United States where Christians often find negotiating a secular, pluralist society jarring.
For many of us do spend a great deal of our time and energy, at work and at home, defending some pathetic little patch of turf which, in the great scheme of things, means precious little. If we’re not careful we can easily find that we’ve invested our lives in battling for some shrinking space that is, ultimately, as inconsequential as the place of a monk in a procession.
I suppose I end up saying that I accept the Christian account of the problem; I just can’t accept Christianity’s account of the solution, and so I remain, by the grace of God perhaps, an atheist.
Thomas Lynch, writing in the New York Times, observes that the days following Halloween are ones set aside to honor the departed. “Whether you are pagan or religious, Celt or Christian, New Age believer or doubter-at-large, these are the days when you traditionally acknowledge that the gone are not forgotten. The seasonal metaphors of reaping and rotting, harvest and darkness, leaf-fall and killing frost supply us with plentiful memento mori. Whatever is or isn’t there when we die, death both frightens and excites us.”
The majority in the Connecticut case rejected the claim that marriage can simply be replicated by a parallel institution. “In view of the exalted status of marriage in our society,” the justices wrote, “it is hardly surprising that civil unions are perceived to be inferior to marriage.
Michael McGough, writing in the Opinion section of the L.A. Times, observes that the shift in the Republican party during the past 20 or so years has made a curiosity out of what he calls “liberal Republicans” such as Sens. Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. He also notes that such Republicans seem to have a tendency toward being Episcopalians, and dryly observes that there are parallels between the demise of these Republicans politically and what’s happening in the church itself.