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Mennonite in a Midlife Crisis (of Faith)

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home By Rhoda Janzen (Henry Holt and Company, 2009) Which is better: to battle against religious stereotypes, or to have a faith completely unknown to others? In my case, my family’s religious persuasion—the Church of God, the congregational Christian church based in Anderson, Indiana—is often mistaken for something else, if not entirely misunderstood. I may not be the best person to explain no…

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Will Hate Crime Laws Redeem Us All?

When my spouse and I lived in Georgia about six years ago, we were very careful about showing public affection in the town where we lived – a good 20 minutes outside of Atlanta. Anyone who has lived in Atlanta, especially anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, understands that there is Atlanta and then there is Georgia. In Atlanta, especially in places like Midtown, walking around holding your partner’s hand was relatively safe. Yo…

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Good Without God: The Ethics of Atheism

Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein (William Morrow, 2009) On Monday, October 26, The United Coalition of Reason launched a “Good without God” campaign to raise the visibility of local nontheistic groups in communities across the country. Their billboards, big white lettering against a background of a fluffy-clouded sky, ask “Are You Good Without God?” The answer: “Millions are.” It’s like a kinder, gen…

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Escalating Afghanistan: What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?

Thirty-four years ago this month the young James Fallows published (in the Washington Monthly) what still remains a definitive article about the class divide in times of war—“What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” I still have a yellowed original copy somewhere. Fallows was writing about the sickening reality that as a Harvard student he, like so many other Ivy Leaguers, could quite easily avoid fighting in Vietnam. They had the ways and means…

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Hawk Attack on Liberal Pro-Israel Conference

Under attack by mudslinging Jewish conservatives, J Street, the 18-month-old pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy and lobby group kicks off its first annual conference tonight in Washington. The purpose of the conservative attacks, it appears, is to send J Street scrambling to defend and explain itself, enabling conservatives to label J Street’s inaugural conference a failure. But it is the conservatives who are backed into a corner by J Street, not th…

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Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?

“How about a blessing?” says a woman, sitting on the steps of her house in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn, “I need it.” Reverend Billy never passes up the chance to talk with a neighbor. The performance artist and anti-corporate activist is running for mayor of New York City on the Green Party ticket; the platform of his campaign, a plea for the sanctity of neighborhoods. “Are you in trouble?” he asks. “Yes I am,” she replies, frank…

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Compelled by Faith: When Prayer is Not Good For You

Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things) by Abby Sher (Simon & Schuster, October 20, 2009) How does an eleven-year-old girl cope with the trauma of losing both her favorite aunt and her beloved father in the span of one calendar year? She may pray to God daily to ask Him to protect her loved ones. But what happens when prayer becomes more than just a comfort? What happens when it becomes a compulsion? This…

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Declares Victory: Is it Premature?

I feel I must begin my post with a disclaimer: I love Bishop John Shelby Spong. His books have done much to help reclaim the Bible and Christianity from the religious right who have sought to turn a religion based on compassion and concern for the neighbor into a self-serving, dogmatic, and often just plain mean form of religion. Bishop Spong is an acquaintance of mine and was kind enough to offer an endorsement for my book Bulletproof Faith: A S…

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Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

There is, perhaps, no symbol more powerful, no word more electric than ‘God’. And because the God of the monotheisms undergirds and sustains the structure of so many people’s worldviews, if you want to command the attention of said millions, all you need to do is invoke God—claim God spoke to you, name your will as ‘His’, or proclaim “God wants X,” “God thinks X”—and thank God when all is said and done. For good or bad, the world can be yours. Po…

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