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“Ex-Gay” Common Ground More of a Killing Ground

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…point is that people can leave whatever it is that God calls less than His best and move into something that is His best, becoming more like He is. Honestly, this isn’t news. So-called “ex-gay ministries” have long given up the promise of turning homosexuals into heterosexuals. True, some who say they’ve “left homosexuality” have married opposite gender partners and had children. Here we can begin the long argument over Alfred Kinsey and his conti…

Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban

By Shabana Mir

…hat is best for you, we are going to spell out for you what is in your own best interest. First, you need to stop obeying men. Those men. Fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles, burly sons, imams, mullahs. You need to have a mind of your own. We understand that the peculiarly Muslim pathology is hard to overcome, but we urge you to struggle. Be bold. Make your own decisions. How do you know when you are making your own decisions? Your decisions can b…

Transforming America’s Israel Lobby

By Dan Fleshler

…guments that prop up our craving to believe in the Israelis. So, we try to look the other way when we come across tidbits like the following, from a B’Tselem, press release in December 2007: A survey conducted by the Israeli military and published by leading Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, found that a quarter of soldiers serving at checkpoints in the West Bank perpetrated or witnessed abuse of Palestinians. In response, B’Tselem said that the nu…

Do Atheists Borrow Religion’s Morality?

By Frank Schaeffer

…ishment” is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point… [W]e do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank… So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist…

Teaching the Dalai Lama’s Monks: Better Religion Through Science

By Arri Eisen

“Do bacteria require light?” Tashi, one of my best students, wants to know. He sits there in Dharamsala, India, like his Buddhist monk colleagues, cross-legged on the floor in maroon robes, six hours a day learning science from a tall white Jewish guy from North Carolina. Religion often has a hard time of it, especially among academics, and especially among scientists. Of course academics have no problem studying religion and raising big money to…

What Do Christians Think About the Netanyahu Speech?

By Sarah Posner

…oycott its leader — they are no friends of Israel, and we pledge to do our best to educate voters about their undermining of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship at this crucial hour. Today, in an email to supporters, CUFI is urging voters to call their representatives and demand that they attend the speech. “Attending this speech is not merely an opportunity for our representatives;” the email reads, “it is their responsibility.” On the other…

On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

By Ed Knudson

…n in Geneva even had committees set up to study the Bible to determine how best to build the city’s sewer system! Martin Luther did not see it this way; he saw the Bible as absolutely authoritative concerning the gospel, but detailed legal prescriptions in the Bible were for the people of that time. For Luther, ethical imperatives come from each person’s direct relationship with God (strange as that concept is for many people today). Those in the…

Evangelical Stephen Baldwin’s Imitatio Christi & “Reality” TV

By Gabriel Mckee

…isms—they dumb us down, they elevate public humiliation—but what I’m really interested in is the way shows like Spike’s Joe Schmo Show or VH1’s I Love Money turn into morality plays about the value of friendship and loyalty. In the best reality shows, the initial rush of schadenfreude is gradually replaced with a genuine affection for the “good guys,” and righteous frustration at the machinations of the villains. I’m also fascinated by the villain…

Are You Doing Your Part in the Baby War?

By Katherine Stewart

…dy. “We had originally planned not to have kids, but now we have to do our best to repopulate the city with Christians.” The religious right consistently promotes policies that defund any kind of government efforts to improve the conditions of working families. They support politicians and policies that strip poor, working and middle class families of social support. Everything from food stamps to public education to health care are on the choppin…

Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

By Nathan Schneider

…enthusiasm, despite praying and proselytizing and Bible-thumping with the best of them, Roose didn’t give in all the way. He didn’t get “saved.” His interior monologue never got too comfortable with the endless homophobia that passes for ordinary conversation among Liberty students, though he also fell short of speaking out against it at the time. When he returned, he was still a happy, post-everything Brown student. But he was still praying, eve…