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Can Christians Lie? How Conservative Evangelical Bible Interpretation Has Shaped ‘Truth’

…accepting biological evolution like virtually all professional scientists today, writes of a private conversation he had with Morris one morning in the hotel cafeteria they both were staying at following their public debate the evening before. Miller questioned Morris with the aim of getting him to admit in private that this was all a charade, and that Morris was knowingly perpetrating a fraud on the public. Miller expected a “charlatan,” but dis…

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The Tense History Behind Jimmy Carter’s Liberty U. Commencement Address

…. The same elite establishment that Jesus condemned remains the real enemy today. Falwell Jr.’s need to make Carter acceptable to the Liberty crowd (who Carter joked was larger than Trump’s crowd the previous year) did not end there. Unlike his father, Falwell Jr. praised Carter for his 1976 Playboy interview because Carter was willing to follow the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5:27-28: “You have heard it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not…

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Sikh Temple Shooting: Two Massacres and the Virtual Transformation of Trauma

…and 2012. I loathe to say this, but what if the 1984 massacre had happened today? Could the ruthless terror unleashed on innocent Sikhs have been curtailed before it became a trauma of magnifying proportions that the world continues to remain oblivious to? Could the effects of that trauma have been lessened? Even today it is only a handful of what sociologist Arlene Stein calls ‘memory-workers’ who are using the internet in defining 1984 as a trau…

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The Atheist Encounter with Christianity: A Failure to Disbelieve?

…ly admitted that evolution poses challenges to Christian theology and have freely chosen to not ignore them or sweep them under the rug. They have a deep knowledge of Christian history and theology as well as evolutionary theory. And they have reconciled the two and find joy living and working on the boundary between them. These people are not uncommon. Many of them are parishoners in Catholic and mainline churches, many are teachers and professor…

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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

…le respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For these teens and the myriad other bisexual, transgender, lesbian and gay youth lost to suicide, the waiting game hasn’t worked so well. A…

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Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

…ghtmares. In somewhat the same way that climate change denialism functions today, the Atoms for Peace campaign merely divided public opinion, allowing some to sleep easy and the most knowledgeable people even more distraught and fearful. Events like the recent reactor meltdown in Northeastern Japan can bring even the sleepers back to the edge of anxiety, and then there’s the persistent fear that a nut job or a terrorist will decide to usher in apo…

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Heaven On Earth: A Non-Hysterical History of Shari’ah

…e the matters that are causing greatest damage to inter-communal relations today. That means, regrettably, devoting attention to conflict—not just the ‘jihad and terrorism’ you mention, but also the harsh attitudes toward criminal justice, gender politics and religious toleration that have been hardening of late in some ostensibly Islamic states.   Another writer might well have struck a different balance, but that would simply have drawn criticis…

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Southern Baptists Embrace Minorities, but Not Gays

Southern Baptists are feeling pretty good about themselves today. Eleven years after the denomination apologized to African-Americans for supporting segregation and slavery, it elected a black man as its first vice president of the convention—“the highest position yet held by an African-American” in the denomination, the New York Times notes. Fred Luter Jr. pastors a largely black church in New Orleans and is apparently an “overwhelming favorite…

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The Oil Spill and “Real Deathliness”

…can’t even grasp, and nobody—nobody—has any plausible idea of how to break free from the system. There are plenty of ideas floating around, yes, but there are no easy answers to put into practice today. If there were, we’d be using them. That’s what we’re afraid of and what we can’t afford to admit even to ourselves. So to my mind, this “Targum on Romans” does more to speak to the situation than all the pretty talk about “creation care”: So here’s…

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When Welcoming the Stranger Was Not Just a Religious Value

…stem works, and that good can come when we choose to be our better selves. Today, as was the case in 1979, religious leaders have set aside their divisions and have stood united in their strong commitment to aid and resettle Syrian refugees. Last week, as Congress debated the fate of Syrian refugee resettlement, organizations representing the entire gamut of American religious communities—Muslims and Jews, evangelicals and Unitarians, Catholics an…

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