Religion Dispatches
…f course, the awkward flinch. The waiting, looking behind my back and all around me, with the faucet still at full blast while I listened to the sound of a world absent of divinity. There was even some disbelief in the efficacy of my disbelief, an uncertainty of what I had just accomplished. Just because I chose not to believe in God, how could that mean He didn’t exist? And then, more worryingly—could I really get away with this? I was so taken b…
Read More…is post about Georgetown Law professor Marty Lederman, who first raised it last year.) In short, contrary to Hobby Lobby’s claims that not offering the coverage would subject it to ruinous fines, the regulation merely imposes a tax. Should a company choose to offer no group health plan at all, it would pay the tax, which, Kagan argued, is less than a cost of a group health plan. What’s more, she argued, even if the company offered higher wages to…
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…te segregation and economic favoritism. When I spoke with Rothstein on the phone, he underscored the long-term effects of this last policy. During the 1940s and 1950s, suburban subdivisions were built in St. Louis, and throughout the country, using federal loans stipulating that no homes be sold to African Americans. Priced at about $125,000 in today’s dollars, these were affordable—with a mortgage—to working class families, black or white. Yet bl…
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…Laguna Seca. The author and some of her Deadhead friends at a Dead show in Las Vegas in 1993. Photo courtesy of the author. It was through our love of the Dead that we formed a tribe of friends. We were a hodgepodge of Iranian, Korean, American, and Israeli kids bound together by our love of the band and bonded with each other by road trips where all 20 of us would crash in an EZ 8 motel in the middle of Oakland for days when the band was in town….
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…t Magnolia did it better. Similarly, Liel Leibovitz at Tablet thinks that Groundhog Day and Fight Club are more likely to inspire religious discussion than Noah. God’s Not Dead presents philosophy as the enemy of Christianity, but the screenwriter doesn’t seem to know much about philosophy. At Patheos, real-life atheist philosophy professor Dan Fincke offers a point-by-point rebuttal to the film (including a section called “How I Graded Religious…
Read More…irth of Israel and the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land in the last days) and Ezekiel 38 and 39 (the rise of a Russian dictator who will form an alliance with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to attack and try to destroy Israel in the last days).” According to the best-selling author and frequent guest on conservative radio and television programs, the cruise allowed the couple “to be with evangelical Christian leaders who love…
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…essay in The American Prospect titled “Hillary Was Right,” journalist Nicholas Confessore characterized Regnery as the “lifestyle press for conservatives, preferred printer of presidential hopefuls, and venerable publisher of books for the culture wars.” Since the advent of the Iraq War, Regnery has added defense of the Bush administration, promotion of the war on terror and Islam: [This year] Regnery published two books that fanned fears of Islam…
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…walked to the Tabernacle on Temple Square to wait in the stand-by line for last-minute tickets. Instead they were met by church spokesperson Ruth Todd, who said, “This is no surprise to you, that we won’t be able to offer you a ticket or a place.” Then, as men and boys strode past them into the Tabernacle where they awaited the opportunity to move to the Conference Center where the session would take place, members of Ordain Women lined up indivi…
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…d customers at restaurants want to get their dish for free, or get a free glass of wine, or a free dessert, because that balances out the input-output equation. So if the customer service agent gives you something, then you feel compensated, then you’re okay, and it’s not such a cognitive puzzle, and also not such a frustration to deal with the amorphous agent of the airline as a whole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the customer service agent or…
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…our world tours, recorded four albums, and performed 248 sold-out shows in Las Vegas. Today she’s worth more than $60 million. While everyone knows about Spears, few know—and even fewer discuss—the role religion has played in her life. Like Katy Perry, who was once a Contemporary Christian Music artist, Spears has deep roots in white American evangelicalism. Born and raised in the Bible Belt and surrounded by conservative evangelical Protestants,…
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