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The Theology of Westboro: The “World’s Meanest Church” Is More Than Picket Signs

…e heard so much more widely and creep into secular life, from school dress codes to abstinence-only education. So those people are likely to be irritated. What alternative title would you give the book? Redemption in Topeka: How the World’s Meanest Church Decided to Stop Anti-Gay Picketing and Spend Their Talent and Energy Ending Racism in the Heart of America. Previous to his anti-gay work, Fred Phelps was a civil rights activist who led consider…

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2010: What Did We Believe In?

…virulent that hatred has become. Americans are willing to throw religious freedom and tolerance out the window, a posture all too familiar in the nation’s history and sadly contradictory to the sacred principles upon which this country was founded. Opposition to the construction of a Muslim community center in New York; the brutal attack on a Muslim cabbie; the proposed burning of Qur’ans by a small church that created a media sensation; the pass…

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Proposition 8, Mormonism, and the Other Fight for Alternative Marriage

…lows its own members to divorce and remarry. The church has strict dietary codes, prohibiting coffee, tobacco, and alcohol, which presumably will not be available in heaven, but sees no need to legislate against their sale, even in Utah. There is the assumption that however wicked or wrong a certain behavior might be, it need not overwhelm the efforts of the Latter-day Saints to be righteous, and that, furthermore, God can adequately judge and pun…

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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

…gical schema? Robertson would say that Haiti’s centuries-long struggle for freedom, sovereignty, and dignity is indeed a demonic project—but it would have been hard for captive Africans in Saint-Domingue to embrace the divine character of their colonizers’ Christian God. What the colonial ruling class understood to be either divine or demonic in the Christian pantheon, the enslaved African laborers had to have understood as one and the same evil f…

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Detroit’s Baggy Pants Fatwa

…rementioned regimes are well known for enforcing strict, puritanical dress codes on their citizenry. Saudi Arabia’s toleration of the feared muttawi‘in (“volunteers” in Arabic) is well known. These vigilantes roam the land, harassing those deemed in violation of Islamic norms of modesty. In Iran, a division of the police department exists to enforce sartorial probity, with uniformed men and women wandering like parking cops on the look out for vio…

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A New Mormon Religion Has Taken QAnon Conspiracies and Canonized Them as Doctrine

…, reads like word salad. For supporters, however, it’s a puzzle of cryptic codes and symbols that unveil a Satanic pedophile ring controlling the government. Beginning in 2018, the mysterious figure “Q” began detailing Donald Trump’s ascent to power and the “storm” that was coming to finally end control of the “Deep State” and corrupt government. Using “Q drops,” the cryptic 8Kun messages used to rally supporters, “Q” offered supposed intel to the…

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Jail for Bible Study? Note to Self.

…g for years requirements that he abide by basic building, fire, and zoning codes. So you go back to that Charisma story and the overblown rhetoric about religious persecution, and remind yourself not to take seriously the next thing you read or hear from the Rutherford Institute. And while you can’t be sure, you don’t recall reading that the heat and harsh conditions at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Tent City Jail had previously moved John…

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What was Pants to Church Sunday Really About?

…tly gender-segregated customs of Mormonism are—like unwritten Sunday dress codes—traditional rather than doctrinal and human rather than inspired. It was also an opportunity to start a conversation about traditional gender inequalities in a community where feminism has been unnecessarily stigmatized as an excommunicable offense.  (And for the record, it is not.) Because really, it’s not pants or the right to wear pants that tops the list of Mormon…

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Muslim Women and Family Law

…ning that several predominately Muslim countries are updating their family codes to reflect pushes for equality and fairness. But this assumes that it’s the laws that lag behind society, which just isn’t always true. Yes, there are men and women who want family laws in their countries to change. But that doesn’t mean society at large wants this, too. Many men are reluctant to dismantle the patriarchal interpretations that work in their favor, and…

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Graeme Wood on ISIS: No Such Thing as Objective Critique

…ocation of Koranic verses. He reports that ISIS supporters “often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam,” and that they, “spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar.” These people speak with authority, so they must be authoritative. So the logic goes. In the article, Wood relies on the familiar Protestant notion tha…

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