Religion Dispatches
…his episode should be a wake-up call to all those who have spent tons of money trying to inject some faithiness into Democratic politics—these efforts are obviously not working. Yes, Dems do call out the House troglodytes on the grounds of their “callousness” or “cynicism” or what have you. But as we see from the comments above, there’s no real ethical substratum in any of the celebrity Dems, let alone among Dems who are deserting Obama completely…
Read More…hey don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed. At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake: Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now? I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Ameri…
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…lessness of the U.S. labor market is of course matched by the cruelty of a near-nonexistent social safety net that remains a source of horrified wonderment to observers from other developed countries. Yet again, the reason is racism. As New York Times economic journalist Eduardo Porter points out in American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise, the social supports created in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II were res…
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…flowing in multiple directions for everything from apathy to self-righteousness. Near the center of that motley crew are those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, in the ocea…
Read More…ets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to Jesus merchandise, which results in some odd juxtapositions. Here, for example, are the current most popular category them…
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…e with Mitch McConnell during his time in office—in order to “get things done.” If one is relatively comfortable with the status quo, then such calls for reconciliation, unity, or “bipartisanship” will sound like common sense. Simply tone down the rhetoric, resist “extremism,” and stress “pragmatic” solutions, and everything will work out. President Obama’s recent memoir is a good example of the rhetorical power of such appeals to “unity,” at leas…
Read More…credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign energy sources, having failed to turn to renewables while mindlessly pumping more cheap petroleum into our veins. Like other critics of the new encyclical, Brooks chalks up the pope’s hostility to capitalism as the product of naivete or perhap…
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…dentify the remains. The mother broke down in tears. Rodriguez hung up the phone and cried. Guilty of the Gospel Samaritans is not specifically a religious humanitarian organization, but many of the Samaritan volunteers such as Brother David say they are motivated by the words of Christ—this is simply a manifestation of their faith. Formerly known as Samaritan Patrol, the organization’s roots are in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. A religious…
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…was caught after the murder, fleeing halfway across the state, he had the phone number of an Operation Rescue leader on his dashboard—the tip of the iceberg in terms of the broader connections he’d built with anti-abortion extremists. The church, Roeder would later testify, emerged as the only place he could find a shot at Tiller, around the elaborate security measures the doctor had learned to follow at his clinic and home. “Justifiable homicide…
Read More…this week from his job as creative director of the country’s largest cell phone retailer after more than 15 LGBT organizations teamed up to urge Apple CEO Tim Cook to cut ties with Euroset. He did so defiantly, saying he would never change his position that “Sodom and Gomorrah must be destroyed!” Journalist and LGBT activist Masha Gessen, who has dual Russian and American citizenship, has left Russia with her partner and three children under the…
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