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Bush Has Helped the Scarecrow of American Religion

…religion, is really the plague on religion coverage in general. Over these last years, as the religious right has risen in power, as it attempts to actually create a monolithic understanding of Christianity, Christians have fought back. We now know that not all Evangelicals believe in the “Gospel of Gun.” Some care about helping the poor and protecting the environment. More American Jews are coming out to say that being pro-Jewish doesn’t automati…

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Rise of Episcopal Village

…s shift in thinking are myriad and have only intensified since 2008 when a number of studies indicated that for the first time in US history, less than 50 percent of Americans classified themselves as “Christian.” Such shifts in church decline have been documented in the Church of England (UK) for decades. As reported by the Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture, the Sheffield Centre, Children’s Sunday school…

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When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

…were more mundane and predictable: Section Two redefined how we distribute numbers of representatives state-by-state, by “counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed”; and Section Three excluded from future service any member of the government who had previously sworn an oath of office to the State and then joined the Confederacy in open rebellion. Predictable stuff, really. After winning the War, Washington int…

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Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

…t” training. The Charter has gone a long way toward addressing the crisis. Last month, the bishops released a study of the “causes and context” of the crisis, conducted by independent researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The report shows that abuse allegations have been steadily declining since the 1980s. Even so, the most recent diocesan audits found just seven credible allegations of abuse in 2010. In 1975, according to the…

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Obstacles for Secularists

…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…

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The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

…the Grateful Dead collectively formed an intentionally itinerant community numbering in the tens of thousands, with their own customs, vernacular, art, and economy. In his explanation of the lure of the Grateful Dead to thousands of Deadheads around the country, Garcia ruminated, “maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America.” Indeed, the promise of a great American adventure animated Deadheads to undertake an annual pilgrimage across th…

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Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

…counter-protestors. That’s an exaggeration, but I’m just saying, that the number of nazis compared to counter-protestors was unreal. I’m just like, where in the hell did all these people come from? They took over the fucking city. So as things were heating up, we saw riot gear enter into our barricade, where we had been secured. And it was advised to leave that location and go to a secure location. And so, at that point we left that barricade and…

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Missing the Anger for the Shoes

…feces smeared all over their floors and carpets, although I’m sure a great number of non-Muslims appreciate these artifacts from guests’ shoes. As mentioned previously, shoes are also used to discipline people. Belt-whuppins are difficult when men’s traditional garb does not include belts. Shoes/slippers/etc. are far more common. They are used to help “enlighten” insouciant, arrogant, oblivious, destructive, or otherwise socially maladjusted indiv…

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The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

…perhaps encounter a faith that seems naturally separate from the arid scholasticism and harsh rulings of the orthodox, even if that faith is more imagined than real. And yet, despite there being some expected variation between Celtic and the rest of Europe’s Christianity, there’s no substantial theological difference between the Roman Catholic Church of the period and its Irish, Scottish, and Welsh believers. Until the Synod of Whitby in 664, the…

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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

…her to acknowledge Robertson’s latest provocation. It bores me, and I feel cheapened even to think about it as I worry about one of my students who has not yet returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Still I could not resist clicking on a list of Robertson’s top ten greatest gaffes that I found in the blogosphere. It was amusing to ponder the rankings. Does Robertson’s feat of leg-pressing 2000 pounds (thanks to the diet shakes he was selling) dese…

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