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Synod ‘Fight for Soul’ of Catholic Church, Flap On English Translation of Key Report; Anti-Gay Law Advances in Kyrgyzstan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ancis for creating a climate of freedom in which everyone has felt totally free to say what they really think on a given topic. “People are very relaxed, and even make jokes”, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin commented. He said the Pope has contributed greatly to this climate not only by advocating that they speak freely and boldly on the first day but also by arriving early each day, greeting participants when they arrive, and mingling with p…

Pariah or Charmed Hero: America’s Obsession with Jews and Israel

By Shaul Magid

…e immensely popular Left Behind series by Timothy LeHay and Jerry Jenkins. Freedman argues that while the Left Behind series is ostensibly philo-Semitic (citing Melanie McAlister, Freedman calls it a kind of “Christian Zionism”) it retains old Christian anti-Semitic structures that are simply turned toward a new enemy (some of whom remain Jews). He writes: But this is not to say the text is free of anti-Semitic topoi [conventional themes]; indeed…

Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

By Shane Burley

…military solution. The only future is peace and safety for all—grounded in freedom, justice, and equality,” the ADL shot back saying their ideas “help give rise to antisemitism” and employ “antisemitic tropes.” “In this moment of confusion and pain, we must be clear about one thing: Every Palestinian life, every Jewish life, and every Israeli life is precious, and the Israeli government has failed all of those lives. Only peace, justice, and equal…

Why Trump’s Religious Liberty Order is “a Whole Lot of Nothing”

By Sunnivie Brydum

…rder could send a signal to churches and religious nonprofits that they’re free to begin engaging in more direct electioneering—like raising money for candidates or specific causes without endangering their tax-exempt status—but the impact of that signal remains to be seen, Kreis cautioned. And a full revocation of the Johnson Amendment would require an act of Congress—like the passage of H.R. 172, introduced into the House in January by North Car…

You Are More Than Your Brain: A Revolutionary Theory of Consciousness

By John Stoehr

…opnik has pointed out, is probably the latest version of this story—a hero freeing human beings from their roles as organic batteries cultivated to power a race of evil machines. There is a more frightening proposition: that other people are in fact shadows cast on the wall. How do we know others are not a dream? Even observable behavior is a poor indicator. Take the fact of Kismet, a robot engineered at MIT to imitate a range of human attitudes a…

Republican Lauren Boebert Jokes About AR-15s and Jesus — And Yes, She’s a ‘Real’ Christian

By Chrissy Stroop

…hrist.” She goes on, “We came to Jesus, because we were bound, we were not free. But Jesus paid the ultimate price to set us free for all of eternity.” No, there’s simply no tenable case to be made that Boebert is not a “real” Christian. She is very much a Christian. She is also a terrible person. And if we can’t get it through our heads that it is very possible to be both of those things at the same time, we will never effectively counter the cor…

Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates: The Problem with Popularization

By Kathryn Lofton

…now hold dear. In his tormented, lonesome, obsessive, Calvinist way, he is free. I find him hard to like, but easy to love. Throughout The Wordy Shipmates, Vowell suggests that we live not in John Winthrop or Roger Williams’ world, but in Ronald Reagan’s redaction of their world. This, she argues effectively, is a tragic turn to a noble Arbella image. Ronald Reagan made us believe our city on the hill would come not through serious communitarianis…

Why Must Jesus Contain Gluten?

By Benjamin Dueholm

…harist, it included a restatement of a prohibition of totally wheat-gluten-free hosts. This was often reported as something of a snub of the Celiac sufferers (or gluten intolerant) among the faithful. But reading through the directive and the supporting documentation, I was struck by their attempts to accommodate communicants who can’t tolerate some essential aspect of the rite. The bread for the host can be so low in gluten as to qualify for “glu…

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival

By Bill Berkowitz

…Lies That is Amway/Quixtar and their Motivational Organizations—available free on the author’s Web site—told me that the controversies stalking the company continue to this day. Scheibeler said that he had “worked with local victims and initiated a UK government investigation in which the DTI/BERR (Department of Trade and Industry/Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) took legal action against Amway and is waiting for an appeals court decisio…

Christianity’s Greatest Counterfeit

By Willie James Jennings

…tle to do with the worship of a marginalized Jew, named Jesus, who came to free the poor and oppressed. This counterfeit Christian community worships power, desires control, and imagines the world revolving around self-sufficient men (and a few women). I call it “Mad Man Religion.” Mad Man Religion looks just like Christianity. It connects religious practices to free market practices like you would connect pieces from a Lego set. And it offers to…