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Note to Religious Liberals: God Does Take Sides

By Daniel Schultz

…ack into serfdom, unemployment benefits expired, and in a bid to bring the spirit of peace and generosity back to Christmas, Republicans threatened to filibuster the START treaty until tax cuts for the upper 2% of wealthy Americans were made permanent. Oh, and like a maraschino cherry high atop a lollapalooza of suck, we find out from Wikileaks that the Obama administration—with GOP help—basically has quashed the investigation into torture by slow…

Homeschooling and American Exceptionalism

By Julie Ingersoll

…ing whatsoever is to be added to this, whether by “new revelations” of the Spirit or by the traditions of man.” [emphasis in the original] Certainly homeschoolers are not monolithic; in fact the earliest years of the movement were dominated by lefties who rejected public education for its stifling regimentation, favoring what they often referred to as unschooling. But by the beginning of the twenty-first century homeschooling has become an industr…

Should Faith Healing ‘Do Business’ with Modern Medicine?

By Beatrice Marovich

…effect? It was with this ideas in mind that numerous studies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s sought to determine whether religious practices such as prayer were healing forces whose efficacy could be verified through clinical trials and modern science. But, in 2006, the largest and most ambitious prayer study to date (led by the cardiologist Herbert Benson) indicated that patients who were prayed for (and were told about it, giving th…

Toward a Zombie Theology

By John W. Morehead

…g on the soul. The title of this episode, “TS-19″ referred to “Test Subject 19,” an unfortunate victim of the zombie infliction who allows scientists to monitor his brain as he goes from human to zombie. The scientist doing the computer recording, Dr. Jenner, narrates the changes he sees as the infection progresses. He makes a distinction between “the first event,” or infection leading to death, and a “second event” or “resurrection event” that ma…

Hajj Journal:
This Cultural Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…Enough to appreciate that while our tent was plain desert covered with carpet and a canvas enclosure without air conditioning, many people had far less than that. Never mind the VIP conditions. I managed to return to the tent for more reading meditation and prayer until about half hour before sunset when the women joined the men again (our ONLY semblance of being a “group”) and a long du’a was read in Arabic. Again later I heard complaints that s…

Will Women Priests Change the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…ook place in Detroit, Michigan; the eponymous organization arose from that spirited event. WOC sponsored another meeting in 1978 in Baltimore where women were very specific about the kind of renewed priestly ministry they would accept: one without clericalism, without mandatory celibacy, without hierarchy, but with the inclusion of all and a focus on social justice. WOC became the go-to organization on these matters, holding subsequent meetings an…

High Schooler says Barbara Ehrenreich’s Book Violates his Civil Rights

By Sarah Posner

…roup in recognition of books “which affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” In the section at issue, I observed that the social teachings of Jesus went utterly unmentioned at the tent revival I attended. The revival preachers clearly preferred the dead and risen Christ to the living Jesus — who did indeed drink wine and could even make it out of water. As for the vagrancy charge: that’s what he was, a homeless, itinerant preacher. Ehrenrei…

“Dark” Skin No Longer a Curse in Online Book of Mormon

By Joanna Brooks

…Mormon did not feature summary chapter headings. Headings were added in the 1920s and revised in the 1980s by Bruce R. McConkie, author of Mormon Doctrine (now out of print), a compendium of Mormon theology controversial both for its explicit anti-Catholicism and its promulgation of adoctrinal racist folklore, as we covered here at RD. In 1981, the Church changed the language of 2 Nephi 30: 6 to remove the statement that Lamanites who repented wou…

2010: A Banner Year for Biblical Patriarchy

By Julie Ingersoll

…Baby Conference. At the conference they honored Michelle Duggar, mother of 19 children as an example who “has encouraged many women to embrace the blessing of children and rejoice in the high calling of motherhood.” Finally, while 2010 saw developments in the Creationist Movement, it also sought to frame environmentalism as an anti-Christian Pantheisic religion that threatens human life across the planet and launched the Mysterious Islands Campai…

Bishops vs. Nuns: Who Spoke for God in 2010?

By Eugene McMullan

…heir hurtful activism. Indeed, Ratzinger’s infamous “Halloween Letter” from 1986 (usually read as an anti-gay document) states: It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic di…