Religion Dispatches
…eology of hate.” Through it all, the McCain campaign apparently saw more pluses than minuses in keeping the Hagee endorsement. The break came only when a Hagee sermon appeared that called Hitler an agent of God, hunting down Jews to force them to go where God wants them: the land of Israel. According to the New York Times, “Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the country’s largest branch of Judaism, said that while he did…
Read More…se of Religion” that people “sometimes fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are men so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the free thinking in the world could not destroy the Illiad; how much less the truths of the Bible, which … has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it an idol, and would ha…
Read More…des. It ensures that the US makes public proclamations about democracy and freedom, while in reality, democracy is subsumed and sacrificed every day to self-interest, be that oil or domestic support for Israel. Realpolitik ideologues fear the unleashing of Arab democracy, because in the battle for resources, for alliances and for fraternity, they have largely sided against Muslims. Muslims, and Arabs in particular, have been conditioned by decad…
Read More…determining whether or not a regulation is actually a burden on someone’s free exercise rights. And because of the way the doctrine works, it’s harder for the government to satisfy the rest of the test once the burden has been established. Part of that low bar is due to the fact that the opinion continues the slippage between the concepts of sincere religious belief and substantial burden that were evident in Hobby Lobby as well. The Court notes…
Read More…of our current crises. A stimulus package ought not be reduced to preventing our best and brightest faculty from stimulating the powers of critical reasoning and the potential for new insights these powers create. The Cold War is over and, to use an ironic phrase Sherman used in the summer of 1864, “fairly won.” So the new MacCarthyism turns to a perennial and equally exploitable foe: sexuality. We should, all of us, be very concerned about the ch…
Read More…ave just one cause to fight, over my sexual and personal identity. But because I’m living under the occupation, because I’m living in Israel, I need to talk about two things: the fight of being proud saying that I’m Palestinian without judgment, without racism or without people thinking that I’m going to kill them. The second thing is the fight over my sexual identity in front of my community. I’m not sure that I’m going to see it in our generatio…
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…om which—I will risk this seeming blasphemy—it would not be well for it to free itself completely: and that is the cult of the human being, of the human body, mind and flesh, feeling and will, instinct and conscience. Sometimes flesh, feeling and instinct have the upper hand, and sometimes mind, will and conscience, for these are the two despots who strive for primacy within us, and whose conflict often rends us cruelly. We have to attain a balanc…
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…] really is trying to harmonize with nature, but he also needs to make soy-free chickens for his customers who are demanding soy-free chickens. So he’s feeding them fish meal, which is manifestly unnatural. When I asked him about that he acknowledged that we all have to choose our compromises. In the book you explore a number of social domains—diet, birth control, parenting, economics, alternative medicine—where what’s “natural” is considered to b…
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…stles, respectively. Can “cancel culture” be illegitimately weaponized and used to harm less powerful people? Sure. I’m a freelance writer and a trans woman with no trust fund to my name, and this is something I unfortunately know from personal experience. But it’s a leap to conclude from the inappropriate weaponization of “cancel culture” that all opinions deserve access to all platforms. Nor is this a reason to stick our heads in the sand, ostri…
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…ntly quoting the New Testament and rhapsodizing about how Christians “love freedom so much… because it’s ingrained in our being as new creations in Christ.” 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…
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