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From Licking Floors to Praying for an Inept Government, Churches React to C-19

…ght, you’re potentially responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Pascal’s countryman (and NBA star) Rudy Gobert learned this the hard way. Wouldn’t it be better in the eyes of your fellow citizens and whatever power you believe in to have erred on the side of caution? Or, you know, sure, don’t be a pansy. Go ahead and put the vulnerable at risk to make America great again. Super idea. And to my fellow Christians: St. Pe…

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Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life: Rep. King Revives Manchurian Candidate

…Imams,” based on a remark made 12 years ago by neoconservative-friendly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life.   In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto…

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How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

…past. Marsden and Noll argue that growing evangelical movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America prove that the faith has not totally lost its way, while Bebbington explores the recent history of British evangelicalism in order to highlight the peculiar nature of the American scene. Evangelicalism is now a global phenomenon, the editors conclude, and the troubling features of any particular part of the movement should not distract us from the in…

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Size Matters According to New Study

…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us.   There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes.  Or perhaps the claim i…

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Catholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage

…nies now include defined benefits for sex reassignment surgery, and the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers, have declared the denial of such benefits discriminatory. And intersex conditions are likely to increase, since some of them, at least, are related to the use of pesticides. It seems that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is already aware of—and opposed to—t…

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Protesters in Washington DC, the day before the January 6 insurrection, wrapped in American flags blow shofars.

Netanyahu’s Genocidal Religious Rhetoric isn’t Just an Appeal to the Israeli Right — He Has Another Constituency in Mind

…d barbarians such that, even in 2021, 74% of Republicans and 50% of all Americans agreed with the statement: “Islam is at odds with American values and ways of life.” In other words, to be an American is to be a Christian. Therefore, since Muslims are portrayed as enemies of civilization—i.e. as enemies-of-Christ—a significant percentage of Americans are inspired by Netanyahu’s religious rhetoric, imagining themselves as mutually engaged in defend…

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Christian Epistle on Islamophobia

…have the greatest concentration of white supremacists in America), I met a number of Christian pastors and activists. Afterwards, a conservative evangelical told me he felt that Islamophobia and Christophobia were similar (I guess it’s better than denying bigotry exists at all). I also received an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things….

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“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

…me point as the Louisiana fan, giving as the “number two” reason to choose Santorum that, “The Santorums are raising seven precious children, and they have one in heaven.” (The top reason, delivered by husband Jim Bob Duggar, was the longevity of the Santorums’ marriage.) It’s the same sort of logic offered by another Louisiana rally-goer quoted by the New York Times, 18-year-old Haley Harris, part of the Oklahoma family band that created the unof…

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Obstacles for Secularists

…t for the Guardian.  Waldman observes: But it won’t be easy for secular Americans 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…

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A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

…gion percentage at any public university campus in the United States of America. Atheists are already in the minority in most parts of the country, constituting a small fraction of the religiously unaffiliated in the U.S., but it seemed I was to be an especially odd one out at this event. Or, as my mother once said with a laugh when I was off to speak in Mobile, Alabama: “It’s kind of hip to be a gay atheist [in Cambridge, Massachussetts]. Not so…

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