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‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

…e was now movement for a more nuanced, complicated, and honest assessment. Participants later referred to this period as Camelot. It was in this context that Hofmann, still an undergraduate student, created his first forgery, a transcript that Joseph Smith had supposedly copied from the gold plates themselves. Upon examination, history experts declared it the earliest holograph from the prophet, and church leaders posited it as a clear vindication…

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A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

…nal essay, Coates concludes by offering a potential historical parallel: reparations paid by the German state following the Holocaust. “Only 5 percent of West Germans surveyed reported feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and only 29 percent believed that Jews were owed restitution from the German people,” writes Coates. Nonetheless, as part of the framework of broader reparations that the Allied Powers obliged the German government to pay, it was…

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Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

…ds of witnesses in the investigation leading to the indictments. Dozens of participants were treated at area hospitals after the sweat lodge, and by the end of that fatal day Kirby Brown and James Shore were dead. A third participant, Elizabeth Newman, died a week later at a hospital in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am not a psychic or an attorney, but my experiences through the years with American Indian religious issues tell me this: even though James R…

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For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

…sn’t bode well for the GOP’s future. If young voters primarily thought the Republican Party’s policy plan in 2012 was to prevent gay marriage and to ensure very low taxes for very rich people. . . it’s understandable that a large majority voted the other way. . . . Opposition to gay marriage is a ‘deal breaker’ to one out of four young voters. And it’s not just the marriage issue. Younger Republicans don’t like how the GOP treats the poor and immi…

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Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’

…e German theologian who was imprisoned and executed by the Third Reich for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After it was published, Metaxas’s biography was strenuously criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars around the world, and for a variety of reasons, from its failure to draw from primary source material to its misuse of German texts (a language Metaxas doesn’t speak). But among the most scathing criticisms were those who argued…

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It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

…Billy Graham and, by extension, modern evangelicalism? Billy Graham gets a pass from a lot of scholars who pay very little attenion to his apocalypticism. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s been a core of his ministry. In 1949, when Graham had his first major revival in Los Angeles, the famous one that put him on the map, the revival began just days after Harry Truman announced that the Soviets had tested an atomic bomb. So Graham used this to say…

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Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

…t felt like a betrayal. Rev. Bryant went on to say that he and other black pastors felt “jilted” by the president, particularly since they had defended him against Franklin Graham’s recent attack on the president’s Christianity. Prof. Michael Eric Dyson gave an impassioned sermon on The Ed Show, calling out the black church and Rev. Bryant, Sophia Nelson, and Roland Martin on their opposition to same-sex marriage, encouraging them not to become “s…

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Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

…insults, and Nate Phelps is concerned for his nieces and nephews forced to parrot their parents’ vulgarities, Rev. Schlingensiepen sees a childlike insecurity within Fred Phelps that took hold in his youth. “He’s basically an insecure guy who created, or fell in with, a series of interpretations that are intended to justify his inner rage, mask his inner fear, and by picking controversial social issues, justify his violence,” Schlingensiepen says….

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Religious Leaders On Anti-Muslim Frenzy: “Silence Is Not An Option”

…rfaith groups and the government could “work out the most effective way to parallel actions to lift up a clear image that this has no place in American life.” The anti-Muslim prejudice that has reached fever pitch over the past few months, and against which these activists were pushing back, did not emerge out of nowhere. Films like Obsession and Relentless — and many of the “experts” interviewed in those documentaries, have been disseminated to m…

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Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

…a—I don’t know if I should say unusual, but I can say that there’s a large number of religious organizations in Houston. I think that’s patently obvious, but also true from the research. There are potential civic resources through those religious organizations. You saw it in the kerfuffle about Lakewood, the big church there on the freeway, opening its doors. And people saying “why isn’t this enormous church opening its doors for people as a shelt…

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