Religion Dispatches
…voters that she played the online computer game “World of Warcraft.” The website colleensworld.com declared, “Maine needs a state senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.” As in this latest instance, statements made “in character” were presented out of context. In any case, the strategy backfired. Not only did Lachowicz win the election, but outraged gamers around the country donated $6300 to political action committ…
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…d data on the role of these social factors in the research and on the OPTN website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From my own clinical experience, I have anecdotal data about how significant resources are in getting on the list for an organ transplant (non-kidney). None of this is new to those who work in transplant, and there are many hands taking up the work of ameliorating this situation. These main points were wrapped…
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…or Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. Photo via the author’s website, RachelHeldEvans.com Enter evangelical darling Rachel Held Evans, author of the popular A Year of Biblical Womanhood and other memoirs, including her most recent Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, which chronicles her journey from the evangelical subculture to the Episcopal Church. Raised in the American South, Evans was “baptized by Mart…
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…d, Duke Press graciously agreed to house a selection of the audio on their website. So now, when readers get to the parts that talk about the music in depth, they can go and listen to it while they are reading. It is a pretty cool feature I think. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? That talking to the dead is somehow the same as seeing ghosts (and being haunted), or zombies! It is a funny thing how the moment you begin a…
Read More…hunch, not a scientific observation: we’re still waiting for the Pew Forum numbers on this one. But can you really talk Mormons in 2012 without saying the names Jimmer Fredette, Manti Te’o, and Jabari Parker? Te’o, a linebacker from Laie, Hawaii, finished his senior season at Notre Dame as the most decorated defensive player in collegiate football history. Shooting guard Fredette finished his senior season at Brigham Young University as the leadin…
Read MoreEleven or twelve years ago, I wrote for a website of Mormon satire called the Sugar Beet, modeled on the Onion. Every writer there but me was active and had a temple recommend, so both personal conviction and editorial policy meant that there were a few topics that absolutely couldn’t be mocked, but any other aspect of Mormon culture was fair game. Some of the pieces I wrote had titles like “Vegas Win Attributed to Obedience to Law of Tithing” (…
Read More…he San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. The festival features a number of religion-themed films not likely to be endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In fact, there are 22 films tagged by festival organizers as having religious or spiritual themes. Among them: Joy: Portrait of a Nun profiles Sister Missionary P. Delight and other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the San Francisco-based performance art / po…
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…o offices in Paris, George Packer published a post on the The New Yorker’s website titled “The Blame for the Charlie Hebdo Murders,” in which he explained that: The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action….They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomiz…
Read More…the publicists for the Ben Stein movie Expelled, launched a joint-venture website that not only promoted “academic freedom” bills, but provided sample wording for writing the legislation. Stein held press conferences and showings of the movie—which tries to make the argument (poorly) that academic freedom is under attack because science professors are being persecuted for believing in intelligent design—in states where the bills had been introduc…
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…ace II against a “pussified nation” in a discussion forum on the Mars Hill website wasn’t simply an attack on those he considered “pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama’s boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish.” The forum also provided a platform for attracting publicity and followers. Driscoll’s pugnacious public performances online and in the pulpit weren’t only politi…
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