Is Celibacy to Blame for Church Scandal?
Sex and ministry with Peter Laarman and Father Jim Martin.
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Worse Than the Robber Barons
We’ve always had unscrupulous tycoons, market manipulators and connivers, but we’ve never had as obnoxious a bunch of weasels on Wall Street. These morally deformed punks claim the right to undermine perfectly sensible (and sorely needed) regulation because we haven’t learned to make dishonest gain for ourselves in the ways they have become almost kabbalistically schooled in doing.
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Blood for Oil
The disastrous oil spill should come as no surprise, since no amount of human sacrifice is unacceptable or unimaginable where the relentless pursuit of glittering riches is concerned. “Blood Diamonds” is actually an appropriate tag for all forms of mineral wealth; all of it is won and held at the price of rivers of blood and suffering.
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Undercover Bosses as Minor Divinities: What Ever Happened to ‘Take this Job and Shove It’?
CBS’s hit show just reinforces the economic inequities we’ve ignored for a century—at the peril of our children’s lives. But where have the religious been?
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God is Not Interested in Religion
Is Easter drained of meaning if we acknowledge its borrowed practices and mixed origins? Is there a limit to how porous the boundaries between traditions should become?
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Consumerism’s New Frontier: The Preschool Set
Recent studies show that children as young as three years old use “brand cues” to choose among food and play options—and thus is a Pandora’s toybox opened.
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Should Faith-Based Orgs Be Allowed to Discriminate in Hiring? Introducing: A New Collaboration with Bloggingheads
In this first installment, RD Contributing Editor Peter Laarman debates evangelical professor David Gushee over the Obama administration’s decision to effectively continue to allow recipients of federal faith-based funding to discriminate in hiring. In other clips, the two tangle on gay marriage, whether the Christian Right is dead, and more.
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Bedside Manners: The Broken Spirituality of Contemporary US Medical Practice
Sparked by his elderly mother’s impersonal medical care, our writer laments the fact that doctors aren’t spending nearly enough time listening to and getting to know their patients and its implications for a medical culture that focuses almost exclusively on the body; ignoring soul, spirit, and specificity.
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An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches
We know that there is a significant “uncertain middle” of mainline clergy who would show leadership on LGBT issues if they were not afraid of stirring controversy in their congregations. A new campaign aims to jump start this missing conversation and to create space in American Christianity for a true welcoming of LGBT people and their families.
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Welcome to the (New) Gilded Age: Supreme Court Delivers the Goods to Corporations
The Supreme Court struck down a century of regulations limiting corporate money in politics, clearing the way for a new Gilded Age. In the original Gilded Age (which inspired the Social Gospel movement), opposition was galvanized by a strong anti-corporate Christianity. Where’s the religious opposition now?
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