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No More Condescension: What We Can Do Now

By Peter Laarman

…orted Trump, dismissing them as ignorant racists and misogynists–in short, as “deplorables.” But choosing a course of still more condescension will only dig us in deeper. Religiously, those embittered folks out in the heartland are also God’s children. Politically, as Bernie Sanders understood, they were repeatedly and blatantly betrayed by their own party. It ought to be possible to forge a Workers Party that is fully progressive on social issues…

Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

By Rachel Wagner

…eligious experience, as channeled through those digital representations of self that virtual natives call their avatars. Liquid Identity Avatars are digital representations of users that can be designed to fit within a particular virtual context. Depending on the virtual world, users can choose gender, body type and size, profession—and sometimes even species. Turkle claims that when people select avatars they don’t simply “become who they play.”…

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival

By Bill Berkowitz

…elevision at all since the holidays, you might have wondered why a company called Amway Global ran so many commercials. Were these ads for the same company that has, over the years, been widely accused of running a pyramid scheme, paid nearly $20 million in fines in a Canadian criminal fraud case, and whose image with the public in recent years soured faster than a carton of cottage cheese in the sun? More recently, two former Quixtar distributors…

Grace Under Pressure: Reclaiming Hope for Progressive Religion

By Daniel Schultz

…with ovarian cancer. She had two rounds of chemotherapy at University Medical Center, the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area. Soon after, she and her daughter heard the news on TV: The hospital’s outpatient oncology services were closing because of state Medicaid cuts. Treatment for Frye-Jackman and hundreds of other cancer patients was eliminated. Luckily, Frye-Jackman’s gynecological oncologist, Dr. Nick Spirtos, decided to open a tiny…

Are You Doing Your Part in the Baby War?

By Katherine Stewart

…d this month by Simon & Schuster. Why, Sandler asks, are prejudices about “selfish” and “maladjusted” single kids (and their parents) so widespread in our culture, despite much evidence to the contrary? Part of the answer has to do with myths about the happiness of singletons and their families, which Sandler debunks, but the book has a broader scope that makes it worthwhile for anyone interested in government policy and contemporary American cult…

‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa Receives Threats; ‘Blood Test’ for ‘Degeneratism’: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…rches, schools, and faith-based health services implement Warren’s evangelical vision, in Africa and here at home. Social conservatism is not the entirety of that vision, but it is an essential part of it. And the consequences of that conservatism—marginalization of LGBT people, gag rules on health-care providers, questionable partners to advance the agenda—are all part of the package. To call Warren anti-gay, hateful, or homophobic is to miss the…

Predicting the Future of Religion: A Thought Experiment

By Ed Simon

…s population growth, but what of the mercurial nature of religious faith itself? It might well be impossible to predict the “turn of the soul” for one individual, let alone that of an entire community. As a type of thought experiment let’s imagine a hypothetical “Court Demographer” working under the Tudor King Henry VIII in 1515. What sort of conclusions might he draw from an overview of the European situation at the time? He might have concluded…

Gay Rights Org Delivers 150,000-Signature Petition to LDS Church

By Joanna Brooks

…lomonese, who was accompanied by representatives of the American Psychological Association, Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons, Equality Utah, and the Utah Pride Center, called Packer’s claims “factually and scientifically inaccurate statements that put lives in danger.” In response to the petition, Church spokesman Michael Otterson issued the following statement, which I’ll reprint in full: My name is Michael Otterson. I am here representing th…

Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…mber Timothy McVeigh are striking. Both were good-looking young white men, self-enlisted soldiers in an imagined cosmic war to save Christendom. Both thought their acts of mass destruction would trigger a great battle to rescue society from the liberal forces of multiculturalism that allowed non-Christians and non-whites positions of acceptability. Both regretted the loss of life but thought their actions were “necessary.” For that they were staun…

Betraying a Sacred Trust: From Penn State to Dover Air Force Base

By Gary Laderman

…eatment of soldiers’ corpses are equally difficult to fathom but both tragically clear signs of corruption in the body politic. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the line “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark” is uttered to signal the growing awareness that Denmark’s morality is in decline and crime is rotting the state from the inside. The Dover and Penn State controversies are still unfolding, but there is certainly something rotten in the s…