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Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…ith every outward step, as our universe and our ignorance grows, so do the number of potential space alien hideouts. So does the belief that there must be someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet-finding mission or watch a movie like Contact, I grow excited over—and, like Brahe, even a little afraid of—the vast unknown. My mind boggles. What’s really out ther…

Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

…ous left. It means we’re doing our job. And just in case anyone missed the number of religious progressive groups endorsing the rally, here’s a list culled from One Nation site. Their list of endorsers is pretty long, so I apologize if I missed somebody: Rainbow PUSH Coalition The Shalom Center Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Sikh Coalition The Religious Institute The Community Church of NY Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania C…

Halloween, Evangelicals, and the Macabre

By John W. Morehead

…ism must be evil is ignored; as is that fact that Halloween incorporates a number of elements and influences that have accrued during its journey through various cultures. In truth, some of these elements are Christian, like the feast of the dead that attempted to maintain communion with the saints, both living and deceased. The Roman Catholic Church continues to include this element in its festivities, and thus, as historian Ronald Hutton argues…

We Were Here Before September 11th

By Amina Wadud

…gn, unless you are Native American, I guess. It is true the most vibrant period of Islamic growth in America was not until the beginning of the 20th century. Then, Muslims grew in three ways: conversions, almost exclusively African-American, immigration, and next generations from these two, i.e. new births. Over the next 100 years, leading up to September 11, 2001, all three of these avenues continued with only slight variations and abatements of…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…r people has effects far beyond the individual target. This is what Iris Marion Young terms “systematic violence” in her famous “Five Faces of Oppression.” It is a violence of instrumentality—violence with the effect of keeping an entire group subjugated and in a state of oppression. Young argues, “Members of some groups live with the knowledge that they must fear random, unprovoked attacks on their persons or property, which have no motive but to…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…mage forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cover images of prelates and popes. Life’s cover images of lived-religion would continue with the then-famous Dionne sisters (the first known quintu…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…ar of Satanism has been either a sign of the apocalypse or a source of hilarious news items. But Greaves says their goal is to change the “socio-political dialogue.” For scholars of law and religion, this has been an unprecedented series of events that has forced a conversation about the first amendment and what we mean when we talk about “religion.” Here’s a month-by-month break down of 2014’s Satanic controversies. JANUARY In an interview for Re…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…itically. One source of dismay for some Catholics is that so many of their number broke decisively toward Trump and were critical to his victory in the Rust Belt swing states. “The Catholic vote went for Trump and many Catholics joined the non-voting defectors. That’s a scandal that calls into question the moral standing and integrity of most—not all—Catholics today,” Marquette University moral theologian Dan Maguire told RD. To many, Catholic sup…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…some of Jim and Tammy’s appeal. PTL was all about images so there were any number of options. Too bad books can’t come with a dozen different covers to choose from. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. They are both masters at weaving nonfiction into a page-turner. Anything half as good would be fine with me. What’s your next book? I’m not sure yet. Hopef…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…tive salvation because he wants people to believe it is behind all the nefarious things he wants them to fear: Get into your church and demand, demand that your minister, your priest, your rabbi, your pastor talk about individual rights. If they don’t know them, tell them to pick up George Whitefield. Tell them to pick up the sermons. They are available online. They are available in bookstores everywhere. The sermons that led to the American Revol…