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Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

…%). When Coney Barrett was nominated in September of 2020, Trump’s polling numbers among white evangelicals had dipped to a low of 55% in August 2020. However, once her nomination was made public that number rose to the normal average of 71%. Coney Barrett’s record on reproductive rights was a central issue in her confirmation hearings, as Anna North points out at Vox: Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has als…

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What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

…ief revisiting here. A Missouri state program offered grants for a limited number of nonprofit schools and daycares to purchase rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires. Prospective grantees were evaluated and selected based on a number of factors, including poverty level of the surrounding area and their willingness to generate media exposure for Missouri. In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod congregation, applied for the grant…

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The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…

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“That Guy In Rome”: A Catholic Town in Idaho Where The Pope is a Heretic

…se people were just holdouts, who would soon give up or die off. The large number of young families I saw at St. Joan of Arc—around a third of the parish—suggest to me what others must have by now have realized: that this constituency is not going anywhere soon.” Lefebvre’s views wove together theological, ecclesiastical and political conservatism. Though, like all traditionalist groups, the SSPX claims to be preserving the Church’s immemorial tra…

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Updated: G-O-D Plays a Bit Part in First GOP Debate

…en for thinking that Reagan was God, or at least a patron saint, given the number of times he was name-checked in the debate. Mostly it went like this. The candidates did talk about hot-button social issues, but they held back from claiming religious sponsorship of their ideas. It’s not clear if they’d gotten the memo about not antagonizing religiously unaffiliated voters, or if they simply didn’t see much advantage in differentiating themselves a…

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Who Would the Buddha Bomb?

…our own motives and aspiring to reduce harm and suffering for the greatest number of those at risk.” Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, another notable teacher and translator in the Theravada tradition, disagreed vehemently with Bhikkhu Bodhi’s position, writing a lengthy letter to Inquiring Mind in which he outlined various objections. “The common view—that murderous force is an unfortunate but necessary last resort—is what has caused so much money, time a…

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The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…

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Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

…e priorities of old-fashioned evangelism—where a premium was placed on the number of souls that were “saved”—have been supplanted in recent years by those of the social gospel, in which Christian ethics are applied to societal issues such as poverty, violence, preventable disease, ecological concerns, gender issues, and human rights. “More and more you are beginning to see people seeing the social aspect of the Gospel, where Jesus himself went out…

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Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

…th me about various protective talismans and ghostly premonitions. After a number of the patrons had shared such anecdotes, one Japanese man asked me, curiously, if these sorts of things didn’t go on in America. Before I could answer (and describe America’s own enchantment), a European patron jumped in, assuring everyone that Japan was much more spiritual and magical than the West. He looked to me to confirm the sentiment, which I did my best to r…

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White Evangelical Leaders Already Distancing Themselves from the “81-Percenters”

…olls indicated that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That number represented a shocking measure given who Donald Trump is. But it also fit squarely with the patterns of white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates in all recent elections. Still, some evangelical leaders are challenging these findings. “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump,” reads the headline of an article published…

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