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My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

…n do have constitutional rights. A corporation cannot be convicted of a criminal offense without the protections given by the Constitution to criminal defendants. And in the famous 2010 Citizens United case, the Supreme Court held that corporations have the same First Amendment rights of political speech that “real people” do. If the First Amendment has been interpreted to guarantee a corporation’s free speech rights, does it also have free religi…

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Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

…to be the most damaging to my psyche. For the subsequent three years, in a million PTSD-inducing ways, I would be regularly reminded that my Black life was either worth very little or that it was, in no uncertain terms, altogether “sinful.” Obviously it wasn’t always the overt-racism that communicated such idiocy, like being called a nigger to my face by white men who claimed to have a closer relationship with God than I did. (Although for the rec…

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Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

…conflicted devout. Just ten years ago this wasn’t so. The George W. Bush administration, in which millennials came of age, was reigned over by a simple, angry deity who made one-dimensional characterizations of God more readily available than complex ones. The God-Rock genre had a decent run in the 1990s and early aughts, but its contents lacked theological rigor. More wholesome bands like Jars of Clay essentially sang praise anthems while an angs…

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Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

Mitt Romney’s delusional 2012 pollsters got nothing on apologists for last week’s Pew Poll that found no real “Francis effect” from the pope’s first year. According to Daniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to fin…

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8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

…have dismissed the film as blatantly false.   But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [See also Holly Welker’s review here. – Eds] Some take exception to editing choices that sequence events out of context for dramatic effect; others wish that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notori…

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Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

…big tent approach to coverage of American ir/a/religion. But do the Gallup numbers point to new ways we might be thinking about business as usual? Two findings are striking. First: Gallup reported that although Americans felt religion’s influence was declining, many—75 percent—agreed that more religion would be positive for the country. Not surprisingly, churchgoers were most gung-ho about religion’s beneficial impact. But “over half of those who…

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The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

…groups included. But it’s curious that BtA explains its social justice commitments not in the age-old teachings of the Jewish tradition (e.g., “You shall not mistreat a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)) but in more recent, and less universal, Jewish experiences.  Ironically, this choice is at once too particular, and not particular enough. It excludes many Jews, and perhaps deliberately depic…

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