Religion Dispatches
…up for any but the very wealthiest—that cuts affecting working and middle-class families will be extended. As for the “job killer” rhetoric of Sen. Hatch and the rest, the president could actually have some fun poking holes in the fantastical idea that handing rich and powerful people still more money means they will dutifully make productive, job-creating investments in the domestic economy. There has never been a shred of evidence to support…
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…l source. It is too white, too Western and, tends to include only economic class, not race, in its power analysis. Cone’s theological sources are the bible and black experience. If one is going to argue against his theology, one must argue against these sources not Marx. So far, Beck has said nothing about black experience and nearly everything he has claimed about the bible has been untrue. His objection to the idea of collective salvation is no…
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…nts, as normal aspects of youth culture are looked at through a magnifying class and distorted into symptoms of various pathologies. We see surprisingly few representations of mass locker searches or other abuses of power by American schools on television, so the moment in this week’s episode involving the locker search stood out to me. (It especially stood out given the news coverage this weekend of the Pennsylvania school which put spyware on co…
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…ely revamped creationism and was unconstitutional in public school science class. Even though McLeroy will no longer be on the board (he lost his primary reelection bid this spring to a more mainstream Republican), McLeroy said he believes the supplemental materials provision will create greater flexibility in what material may be adopted for the classrooms. Rather than meet all the new standards, the material only has to address some of them. “It…
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…and highly imaginative, scholar of American literature. He did not let the class neglect the crucial detail, revealed near the book’s end, that our stalwart narrator has been confined to a sanitorium, and may not be quite the trustworthy reporter he would have us believe him to be. So the book was far more than a manifesto for the mid-teen audience horrified by the overwhelming influence of “phonies” in the adult world. It was a cautionary tale ab…
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…fe.” Supporters of this language may have forgotten the lesson from health class that excess carbon dioxide in the bloodstream is fatal to humans. Academic Freedom Just as not all Christians are fundamentalists (indeed, most mainstream faiths have no problem with evolutionary theory), not all conservative Christians deny climate change. The Evangelical Call to Action on Climate Change and its lobbying arm Evangelical Climate Initiative seek to add…
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…t week when I was traveling in Israel and the West Bank with my journalism class. Caprica wasn’t aired where I was; neither could I download it. But its themes were present in the “othering,” religious extremism, ethnic tension, violence, and gender performances that constitute everyday life in the region. Fact is an adrenaline rush, but fiction has better sets and costumes. If you want to know about the real deal, my post is here and the students…
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…labama as one of the ten worst states in overburdening the poor and middle class. Arise is regrouping and thinking about proposing a grocery tax repeal strategy that is not revenue neutral but actually raises additional revenue from the wealthy as a way to secure the support of teachers and other government workers facing cuts. And, Forrister said, in retrospect maybe they should not have bothered spending so much time trying to secure additional…
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…cience textbooks, some of which are used in high school advanced placement classes. Sinauer, along with W.H. Freeman jointly published Hillis’ Science of Biology and Molecular Systemics. President Andrew Sinauer said his company would never consider inserting anti-evolution language into a textbook to make a sale to creationists. “We simply wouldn’t do it and our authors wouldn’t tolerate it,” he said. However, he said that the smaller college tex…
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…on and are taking public steps to leave the ELCA or to remain with certain reservations. A dissenting group called Lutheran CORE (formerly Coalition for Reform, now Coalition for Renewal) met in assembly in September of 2009 to discuss the possibility of forming a new Lutheran church body in North America. Those discussions resulted in the announcement of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), which will include disaffected “confessional” Luth…
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