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Breaking Up with God: I Didn’t Lose My Faith, I Left It

By Sarah Sentilles

…of the first design contests he held. He asked people to come up with the best design possible for a mobile AIDS clinic for a town in a country in Africa. He posted the deadline, and he waited. He didn’t think anyone would submit anything, but on the day of the contest’s deadline, a delivery man from Federal Express rang the doorbell to his tiny studio apartment in New York City. He was carrying a huge bag stuffed with envelopes. “Wow,” the found…

‘Joel’s Army’ Is Already Here: The Obscure 20th Century Religious Movement That Profoundly Influences The Right’s Cosmic Battle

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…se ungodly elements. This view is consistent with the views of some of the best known and most politically active apostolic leaders including Lou Engle who has organized mass prayer rallies under the rubric of The Call in major cities including Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Nashville; and for the “Kill the Gays” legislation in Uganda. What justice is demanding Indeed, when Hamon and others use the language of military combat and preparations, re…

Believing in Johnny Cash: An Open Letter to Atheists

By Paul Wallace

…way, we cannot avoid believing in stories. We can only hope to choose the best ones. How to do this? I propose that good stories are stories that tell the truth, and bad ones are ones that do not. I fear that I may have lost some of you just now. In particular, most atheists I know would be quite critical of the idea that stories are related in any meaningful way to the bedrock truth about the world. So in the interest of keeping everyone on the…

The Sacred and the Dead: I Love You More than Words Can Tell

By David Vanderveen

…knees and stop, drop and roll roll roll out of that broke-down palace. The best thing I got from Wheaton was lifelong friends—and finding a place to live in community, doing life, raising our families, becoming more fully ourselves as the years pass. Together. Mark grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., and after college, returned there to start his own family. One of the many things he taught me was the importance of place. Where you choose to live mat…

Unreleased Religious Freedom Manifesto Isn’t the Culture War Compromise It Hopes to Be

By Frederick Clarkson

…ghter of lambs when the military was in short supply of wool uniforms. The best modern example is laws against racial discrimination: While many people insisted that interracial dating or marriage violated their religion, the Supreme Court, in the 1983 case of Bob Jones University v. United States, rightly refused to grant an exemption to anti-discrimination laws based on religion.” With its claim that the “commitment” of the United States regardi…

Democratic Egypt Tests a Divided Israel

By Shaul Magid

…g; even if it may not serve our interests in the short run, it’s still the best alternative human beings have come up with. In this case, one can certainly understand Netanyahu’s concern; Mubarak is “the devil he knows.” But it’s often the case that autocratic rulers are easier to deal with since they typically answer to no one. Yet, while they appear more stable in the short run, more dictatorships have been overthrown by democratic movements tha…

Irony Thick in Bush Interview with Focus on the Family

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ng the hypocrisy of his words. Daly, similarly, did what he and Focus does best—not getting that the message they’re putting out starkly reveals their own hypocrisy. For example, Bush tells Daly: “I don’t believe you can lead by demonizing somebody. I believe you lead by convincing somebody,” he says. “And in my case, I was unable to convince (some people) on different issues. I understood that.” Here’s where tears of frustration begin. While Daly…

A Report from America’s “Sacrifice Zones”

By Chris Hedges

…ho would buy it or if it would sell. We focused only on producing the very best work we could, a work we were proud of, a work that spoke to us and hopefully would speak to others. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I am hoping they will wake up to the corporate forces arrayed against them, forces that if left unchecked will doom the future of their children. You cannot, as Joe and I were, be around so much…

Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…lear and unambiguous first principles of the Constitution were and are the best guarantee of our right to figure it all out for ourselves, and our best defense against the rear guard action being waged by the religious right and its allies in our time. So, sure, let’s have public religious and non-religious expressions in all of their richness and variety. But let’s also confront and defeat anything that would erode, in fact or appearance, the rol…

Is Christianity Simply About God Entering the Uterus of a Jewish Virgin?

By Eric Reitan

…o the concept of unconditional love. Unconditional love isn’t earned. It’s bestowed as a gift. But for those who’ve grown to measure their worth in terms of their accomplishments, unconditional love may be an unwanted gift. It’s this fact, for Browning, that ultimately perpetuates our alienation from God. Where God offers unconditional love, and invites participation in a community defined by such love, we want the world to be ruled by a law of “t…