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American Indians Irate over Bin Laden Code Name “Geronimo”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…n are remembered only by the place names that use the deeply offensive “s” word which is historically connected to the rape and sexual exploitation of Indian women. During the Vietnam War the US military referred to indigenous-controlled territory as “Indian Country.” Fire bases and military operations were named after Indian leaders or significant events in the longest war in human history, the war against the indigenous peoples of the Western He…

‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical

By Tony Keddie

…tores. Inciting Evangelical boycotts of the retail giant, Graham minced no words: “I have news for [Target] and for everyone else—God created two different genders. Jesus said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female’ (Matthew 19:4).” Presenting this verse as a self-evident argument, Graham rested his case, saying, “You can’t get any clearer than that.” Conservatives are right that the passage in Ma…

The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…o institutionalized spiritual authority delegated to priests over the construction of Christian spiritualities than believers and seekers may have had at any time in the past. In ways that have surely always been true, but which are much more pronounced in competent engagement with the Web 2.0 environment, Christian evangelization and catechesis ultimately result in the conversion of both the missionary and his [sic] subject. To wit, though the Po…

Group Behind King James Bible Congressional Resolution Thinks Obama Might Be Antichrist

By Sarah Posner

…st anti-Christian, or Antichrist-ish. Levesque claimed Obama “twist[s] the word of God” and “the Antichrist Quotient goes up above and beyond for someone who would so blatantly attack the word of God.” He added, “This man offends me, this man offends my God.” After offering a jumble of conspiracy theories, including the evils of environmentalism, the one-world ambitions of the U.N., and the connection between the Israel-Palestine peace process and…

Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking

By Peter Laarman

…itch effort to save his town. He was told to his face that no Englishman’s word could ever again be trusted after the unprovoked massacre of women and children at their encampment. Providence was not spared. It was burned to the ground in March of 1676. The colonists soon rallied and “won” the bloody war. They celebrated by sending many of their Indian captives, including King Philip’s wife and son, into slavery in Bermuda. Once again, we see slav…

Q Shaman’s New Age-Radical Right Blend Hints at the Blurring of Seemingly Disparate Categories

By Susannah Crockford

…ith a jarring experience in which he perceived the world as alien, after struggling with addictions to cigarettes, drugs and fast food, and a difficult childhood. Such stories are by now generic in constructions of shamanism among white, English-speaking Americans without significant connections to living Indigenous traditions. The word ‘shaman’ in English is a derivation from the Evenki word šamán, and it has travelled far from its Indigenous Sib…

The Bible May Be Stranger Than You Think … And Why It Matters

By Kristin Swenson

…re weapon of hatred and destruction. Notice how this kind of learning, this kind of thinking for ourselves, strips away arrogance and prepares a person to exercise precisely the admonition that thrums like a drumbeat throughout the Bible—to love God and to love others. Exactly what that means and how to do it surely merits a lifetime of open-hearted learning….

Where are the Blessed Peacemakers?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…atonement theology—the explanation for why Jesus, at once son of God and “true God from true God,” was allowed to die a criminal’s death in a public execution. If Jesus is God, or even if Jesus was merely God’s son, people have asked through the centuries, why would God as Jesus himself or God as the father of Jesus not save himself/him from such a shameful, horrific death? And how, the questioning continues, does Jesus’ death effect the salvation…

What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…numbers of Eastern Christians became the simultaneous targets of Western crusaders and Islamic conquerors. In this context, rigid adherence to liturgical customs became a means by which to assert and preserve identity in the face of colonization and oppression. Conversely, adherence to Christian practices abandoned by the Christian West—if not in the Middle Ages then certainly by the early Modern Period—came to symbolize the backwardness and even…

Ken Ham Uninvited for Mocking Fellow Speaker’s Version of Creationism

By Julie Ingersoll

…keep this promise. Ken Ham, founder and CEO of the organization that will run the park, believes that two Christians with different interpretations of Genesis, speaking at the same convention is an intolerable level of “compromise”; He asserts that said compromise is undermining the Word of God and bringing about the collapse of the Christian worldview. If he can’t appear at the same home schooling convention with this speaker, how in the world c…