Religion Dispatches
…We, the scholars. You, the voters. We believe him against the evidence because it feels better to believe that his life—his survival, bound and tied, long ago—is a testimony to Jesus’ mercy. We feel better believing that nobody would ever, or could ever, lie about loving God, or lie about loving Christ. And despite our own schismatic compulsions (in daily life, in sectarian divide), we like to believe that all denominations look the same in the da…
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…lation of the European Convention on Human Rights, saying the law had been used to violate freedom of expression. The ruling was rejected by the Russian government; BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder notes that “Russia has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the ECHR’s authority in recent years, including adopting legislation in 2015 allowing for ECHR rulings to be ignored when they contradict the Russian Constitution.” More from Reuters: Pro-Kremlin politicians…
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…s of the kingdom”. These vague provisions allow authorities to arbitrarily use the law to limit free expression. To make matters worse, authorities’ responses stoked the widespread animus against LGBT people in Jordan. In response to Tahboub’s inquiry, which remains private, the ministers of justice and the interior wrote separate official letters to the minister of political and parliamentary affairs, declaring their broad intolerance of LGBT peo…
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…lation theory Mystwood is playing with—he is the universe, the universe is code, his code is part of the important bit, it’s all a simulation, and he’s ready to play. And, importantly, the rest of us might not matter. The language of programming in A Glitch in the Matrix is compelling and difficult. On the one hand, it is literal computer programming. On the other, intentional or not, the movie invokes the language of “deprogramming” that was comm…
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…sociation that many non-Catholics would be “eager” to follow these ethical codes because they “pertain not merely to Catholic teaching but also to moral law.” The 1942 NFCPG resolution also declared that abortion and contraception were an affront, not just to the Catholic, but to the American family. “Sound morality as well as sound patriotism demand the protection of the family and family fertility and the human life stream as fundamental to nati…
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…sics Input Project is the result of tens of thousands of hours put in by Tibetan monks and others supportive of their cause, all transcribing woodblock and other handwritten texts into digital formats. The “User Manual” on the ACIP Web site explains that the mission of the group is finding, organizing, “digitally preserving and disseminating rapidly disappearing Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts that hold the philosophical, cultural, and religious…
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…California comprises some 150 ministries and organizations. It seeks to “cause reformation in the church” and “release freedom into the spheres of society… to bring Heaven to earth.” This echoes the 7 Mountain Mandate and would be the fulfillment of the Dominion mandate. *Aglow International, headquartered in Washington State, is advised by such leading apostles as Ché Ahn, Chuck Pierce, Cindy Jacobs, and James Goll. Founded in 1967, early in the…
Read More…onism is never specifically mentioned in the LSEA. Instead, LSEA relies on code language to attack the teaching of evolution and other subjects that Christian fundamentalists hate because it contradicts their narrow religious worldview – reality be damned. The language that was inserted into the LSEA, which the Livingston school district properly understood to mean it could teach creationism, says that the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and S…
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…indulgences, to borrow a pre-Protestant term. And those are reserved for “the new chosen,” as the Fellowship calls America’s elite, all those now preparing for cozy afterlives to their public lives in penthouses and beach houses and a ranch down in Crawford. +++ Read more about the economy and free market fundamentalism: In Markets We Trust, Peter Laarman Faith-Based Bailout, Louis A. Ruprecht…
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…press ambivalence—desiring to protect free speech but outraged at how this freedom is often used. But aside from lamenting the decision or its results, what is left to do? How may we oppose hatred without sliding into a comfortable position of mere tolerance? How do we uphold the freedom of speech while recognizing that it does not always lead to greater freedom for the marginalized? If we are to oppose hatred and move beyond the mere toleration o…
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