Religion Dispatches
…ligious observance at the 2008 scholarship awards: We take the opportunity today to offer our congratulations to the many students of Saddleback College who have worked so hard and achieved so much. Historically at events such as these we also take the opportunity to offer a moment of thanksgiving to God — if He exists. And I’m not here to say that He does. That would be wrong for an elected official, I am told. No matter that America’s founders i…
Read More…sten, and especially to those who would not. Like the gays and lesbians of today, Jesus made enemies when he came out. Jesus angered his family, he angered his friends, and most of all he angered those in power when he came out against the greed, the neglect of the poor, the inequality, and the injustice all around him. Like many of the gays and lesbians of today, that coming out cost him his life. Coming out is not for wimps—it really does take a…
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…ation. As a Muslim, I’m exhausted. You may think that what plagues Muslims today is a rowdy minority of gung-ho militants in the desert of Iraq and Syria. I think our problem is more subtle than that. We have convinced ourselves, and others, that we live on a planet apart as perfect Muslims who speak exclusively as agents and caretakers of their faith. The spectrum of our visibility is narrow: we are either the fanatic bad Muslim or the sanitized…
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…ted to his personal charisma, marketing skills, or both—was extraordinary. Today the International Sathya Sai Organization disseminates Sai Baba’s teachings and manages a network of over 1,200 Sathya Sai Baba centers in 126 countries. Most of his devotees came to acknowledge him as god-man without ever meeting him in person. Sai Baba’s devotees include powerful politicians (including former prime ministers of India), celebrities, and entrepreneur…
Read More…explored in a piece for the Daily Beast in June), particularly his role in promoting homeschooling, Lizza gives short shrift to Rushdoony, who is not only a “prominent Dominionist,” as Lizza describes him, but the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and Titus’ inspiration. And, as Julie Ingersoll has detailed on numerous occasions, “Christian Reconstructionist founder Rousas John Rushudoony is often called the father of the Christian homeschool…
Read More…arah Lipton-Lubet, Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Today’s hearing was a political show-trial bought and paid for by the powerful lobbyists at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops exerting their influence over certain members of Congress. . . . [F]ederal tax dollars should not be used to impose religious values on others.” Issa, who claimed to be conducting the hearing over the $2 million contract because of the necessit…
Read More…rying to put the best face on their prejudice. For example, UK’s Christian Today editors are trying to convince people that it’s not bigotry to reserve the word “marriage” for heterosexual couples and call all those “gay marriages” civil partnerships. But being different doesn’t have to mean bad or discriminatory. Relationships can be held in equal regard by the state and society, but accommodated by both differently – a single mother may receive…
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…k the capital of Portugal on November 1, 1755, All Saints’ Day. Scientists today speculate that it probably registered as a nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hi…
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…ic legacy, voices such as these cannot be found among the Mormon hierarchy today. After the 2008 crash, the Mormon Conference focused on economic issues, but narrowly, stressing individual thrift and endurance rather than taking on socioeconomic structures or public policy. I had assumed that the silence on the part of today’s Mormon leadership was due to ignorance. It had gotten out of touch. Mormon Leaks has disabused me of that assumption. Elde…
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…th a battle axe” and opined that such militant Christians are again needed today. Contemporary “outlaw archaeologists” continue to draw new narratives from the Rune Stone using such techniques as dowsing rods for divining hidden codes within the runes. Some of these new narratives describe large settlements of Christian Vikings who lived in Minnesota for centuries following Leif Eriksson’s arrival in Vinland. There is a ready market for such wild…
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