Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet free promo code india New Zealand

New Egyptian Appointee Vows to Prevent Sunnis from Falling into ‘Shi‘i Trap’

…guing that a council of religious jurists was more qualified to select the new shaykh al-Azhar than the president. He is also a member of the NDP’s policy committee, which is headed by Gamal Mubarak, one of the president’s sons.   Al-Tayyib claims that his comment about the “Shi‘i trap” noted above is akin to the Iranian government’s approach toward Sunnis in Iran. He said that he would continue to welcome Shi‘i students at al-Azhar in order to “i…

Read More

Harvest of Corruption: The Shame of the Scandal in New Jersey

…bad taste, has already dubbed the arrest of several prominent Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis last week the case of the “kosher nostra”. It is an ugly story, and not just how the Post tells it: alleged corruption among ultra-Orthodox leadership in the form of money laundering through charities and, even worse, strong-armed trafficking in human organs. Not two years after the breaking of the Agriprocessors scandal, we have another searing example of…

Read More

Who Benefits From Standardized Universal Time? And Other Questions to Ask As You Set Your Clocks Back This Weekend

…n extraordinary modern achievement. And it’s uniquely universal: people in New Guinea set their watches by the same standard as people in New Mexico. Ideological enemies find common ground; the United States and North Korea might not agree on much, but we both set our clocks by Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Systems this total have a strange knack for becoming invisible. Here’s the anthropologist David Graeber, talking about the capitalist market, but…

Read More

Unauthorized Catholic Immigrants will Renew a Christian America, Archbishop Says

…f whom are Latino/a), he continued Cardinal Mahoney’s fight, but with some new weapons added to the arsenal.   So what’s new about the tactics we see being developed by Archbishop Gomez this summer, and how do they relate to the future of Catholicism in America?  Too Much Wine Flowing in Napa? A good place to seek answers would be the July 28, 2011 “Catholics in the Next America” conference at the Napa Institute, where the archbishop’s new weapons…

Read More

As We Survey the Damage of Yesterday’s Violence, What Will Christian Nationalist Politics Look Like in 2021? New Report Offers Clues

…ot-so-apolitical after all “Jesus 2020,” the release of American Atheists’ new report serves as a timely reminder not only of the serious threat that Christian extremism represents to American democracy, but also that the spectacular drama that’s been unfolding on the national stage this year is only part of the story. Many crucial church-state separation battles are won and lost at the state level. To be sure, state-level culture warring did slow…

Read More

What Did the Puritans Have Against Christmas?

…s with them, unhindered: Germans, Scandinavians, and the Dutch who founded New Amsterdam (later New York). So Lutherans, Catholics, and the Dutch Reformed celebrated Christmas, along with the Church of England that continued restrained Christmas observances. As a result of this mixture, in the American colonies and then in the new nation, there was no national consensus supporting Christmas, and the disagreement was between Christians. American Ch…

Read More

Capricology: Week 2: The Soul of a Robot

…erate outburst. Even as the Zoe/Avatar/Cylon (ZAC) itself struggled with a new identity (“Do I look male?”) and old/new ways of being in the world (bite enemies, hug friends), she was seen for herself by one whose sight could be trusted. Did you catch the family dog snuggling contentedly at ZAC’s feet? Animals don’t lie; at least not on television. This was a come-to-Lassie moment. What makes us human? And why do we assume that being human constit…

Read More

Tea Party, Circa 1930s: A Response to Michael Kazin

…ny of FDR’s pro-worker initiatives, and the right’s focus shifted from the New Deal to the New World Order. Conservative organizations still roiled local waters. In the 1950s, populist movements fought secular humanism in California’s public schools, and in the 1960s, millions mobilized around Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. By the late 1970s, strong grassroots groups in California, the Ozarks, the Midwest, and the South came together in…

Read More

New Research Suggests That Belief in Demons May Help Explain Christian Support of Trump

…n the Trump White House were strategizing with” the prayer warriors of the New Apostolic Reformation in the days leading up to it. At the not-so-subtly named National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance in February, Trump ally and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson joined with religious leaders to “bind the demonic forces” that threaten their puritanical vision for the United States. How deeply Trump believes himself may be debatable, but he clearl…

Read More

Convergence of Far-Right, Anti-Democratic Factions in the Northwest Could Provide a Model for the Rest of the Nation

…re domestic threats. Their materials are considered required reading for a new private intelligence and militia formation called, American Contingency. “We are definitely living in the last days,” the Patriot Church conference description declared, “but yet we are called to occupy until the Lord comes.” It’s clear that if the occupation comes, it will be the result of the convergence of far right factions seeking to tear down the established insti…

Read More