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In “The Promise,” A Reminder That U.S. Apathy to Genocide Endures

…did not remove him from office. Yet, when a presidential candidate for the United States and sitting governor of New Jersey says this, we shrug our shoulders and call it “politics.” Collectively, we are comfortable condemning the mistakes of the past, but never learning from them. As we turn Syrian refugees away, advocates for human decency pointed out that today’s refugee crisis had echoes to the Jewish refugee crisis of the early 20th century. C…

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Why Has the Critique of Hypocrisy Run Out of Steam?

…ss of pretense. Our old friend self-deception But the hypocrisy we witness today may not be so much acts of pretense and public false performance as self-deception. In Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations, Béla Szabados and Eldon Soifer suggest that our perception of hypocrisy has shifted in modern times. If Biblical and Medieval thinkers saw hypocrisy primarily as a matter of pretense, of the difference between the inner morality and outward perform…

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The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

…age crafted outside the immediate experience of the audience, social media today is by its nature participatory, interactive, collaborative, distributive, and, importantly, integrated deeply into the day-to-day experience of users. Updating a Facebook status or tweeting a question about the nature of the Trinity (it happens!) is not a break in the action, an interruption of demands of daily life. These activities are intimate parts of contemporary…

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After Embracing Female Bishop, Pope Spins Again on Women’s Ordination

…ing able to do “many things better than men,” as he did on the papal plane today, why can’t he conceive of one of those things being the priesthood? Pope Francis repeated again today his idea of the “feminine dimension” of the Catholic church being represented by Mary, and also said once again that Mary is “more important” to the spirituality of the church than the apostles on Pentecost. What the pope is neglecting to acknowledge, however, is that…

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‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

…ing the same platitudes that others spout on days when it does not matter. Today it matters, though, and Robertson seems oblivious to the fact that today the rules have changed. Pat is undoubtedly bad public relations. But does Jesus need a PR firm? Shouldn’t He be able to take care of himself? Offended Christians should hold their existential crisis in check and act as they claim Jesus would. Suffering Haitian people don’t need a theological defe…

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Religion at Decade’s End

…rtain 1960s-style form of the counterculture.   The Protestant case in the United States is especially instructive here. Whereas self-styled “fundamentalists” in 1920 identified themselves as opposed to Darwinian science and Liberal Protestant theology, in the 1970s their target had shifted decisively: feminism, sexual liberation, and secular politics were the new theological and cultural targets du jour. John Paul II’s resolve in undoing a great…

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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

…was not at all good. The Jews who first conceived of heaven as we know it today were under assault, literally, from their Greek rulers. Christians, at the beginning, were a marginal band, derided by the pagan majority. Islam was established in a uniquely inhospitable part of the world by people who hoped to rectify the social order: to turn the “have nots” into “haves.” For all these groups, heaven—a very specific heaven—was a reward for staying…

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How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power, and Exclusion

…rket. But it does seem that the two opposing traditions have come together today to act as a powerful rhetoric of gratitude as indebtedness. Today we have a thriving self-help industry that churns out a steady stream of books on pop psychology, happiness, and gratitude. How well do these grapple with the issues you’ve raised? I was a little surprised by how little attention is paid to the history of gratitude in the self-help literature. I see my…

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Top Five Toxic Religion Stories of 2014

…I don’t believe you can really argue that the world’s most violent actors today aren’t religious. 2. A still-raw rift over government’s role that has deep religious roots There’s no end of bloviation about divided government in the U.S., but I want to suggest that the deeper source of conflict is religious or at least religiously infused. Competing religious visions about how life among Europeans in North America should be ordered go way back to…

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How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power and Exclusion

…rket. But it does seem that the two opposing traditions have come together today to act as a powerful rhetoric of gratitude as indebtedness. Today we have a thriving self-help industry that churns out a steady stream of books on pop psychology, happiness, and gratitude. How well do these grapple with the issues you’ve raised? I was a little surprised by how little attention is paid to the history of gratitude in the self-help literature. I see my…

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