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At the UN, Conservative Christian Agenda Cloaked in Human Rights Language

…ide of the marital bond, and to promote the institution of marriage as the best environment for children. The article on religion is noteworthy for affirming a positive “Right to a Religion”—in contrast to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, the standard in accepted international instruments. Here again, the Declaration cites the UDHR but omits its crucial inclusion of the “freedom to change” belief and highlights “the right of parents t…

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Suicide Bombers and the Prozac God: A Review of Dying for Heaven

…luded her nearly 30-page essay by suggesting that: Governments should also look to the future, in that the purpose and instigation of suicide attacks might change. Today’s threat stems from the powerful association between jihadist beliefs and suicide tactics, but radical Islamists do not own the method. —Security Studies (January–March 2007) The new danger, according to Dying for Heaven author Ariel Glucklich, is pleasure. Not everyday frolicsome…

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The Bible Is Not a Diet Plan

…“boring!” Or consider the words of another megapastor, Joel Osteen, in his bestselling Your Best Life Now: “If you are struggling financially, say something such as, ‘Father, I thank You that You’re causing me to be at the right place at the right time. You are bringing wonderful financial opportunities my way.’ If you will live with an attitude of faith, then, like the saints of old, before long God’s favor is going to show up, and that situation…

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Decoding Rick Warren’s Appreciation for Chick-fil-A

…ssly. We can disagree all day long about whether taxing the wealthy is the best way to heal the economy or which direction the toilet paper roll should go and still be the best of friends. But when you speak and act in ways that seek to limit the civil liberties, increase the risk of discrimination and violence, and damage the psychological and spiritual well-being of me and people like me as a group, you are not being loving. You are not being co…

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Silence of Latino Religious Leaders Enable GOP Tolerance of Trump Spectacle

…e is the GOP now, whose branding with Latino/a voters was next to nil? The best-case scenario is that it can’t get any worse. And where are the religious leaders who’ve dedicated a significant portion of their cache to claims that they can work with the GOP and get them to tone down the invective against their church members? Well, there are always those spurious religious freedom cases to rally around, making sure the local panaderia doesn’t make…

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Why Did So Many Black Women Die? Jonestown at 35

…n theology ethos (what he called ‘apostolic socialism’) which married the “best” parts of the Christian social gospel with a vision of communalism and egalitarianism that more closely aligned with his inherent atheism. Initially this rhetoric was actualized in an array of social welfare programs (such as free community meals, housing and health care) for church members, though it would ultimately be perverted through a systematic pattern of parano…

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Mitt Romney Plays the Tin Man at the NAACP Convention

…ere possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring, best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president.” Well, Mitt, we really don’t understand who you truly are in your heart. You don’t know how to show us what’s really there. And If you can’t fully communicate what you believe is best for African Americans at the NAACP convention, you can’t do it anywhere. So what was this speech about? I belie…

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Capricology: Divine Madness

…n spend time together in the Dive smoking a hallucinatory substance which, best we can tell so far, seems to be legal—if not exactly respectable—in this society. Of course, you’ve heard the joke that you can tell you are watching a cable show if the sympathetic characters are using drugs. This imagery is still not going to be appearing on the major networks. I also continue to be very interested in some of the representations of games in the serie…

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Can Atheists Simply Ignore Theology?

…at we have to “try on” alternative interpretations to see which offers the best fit with the whole of human experience—not merely with what we experience through our senses, but also with the broader and ultimately more important dimensions of our lived experience, including our moral and aesthetic experience and our sense of the numinous. Is a naturalistic worldview, one which explains away these latter features of our lives (or at least the last…

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Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

…eption is that yoga is a mere commodity of global market capitalism or, at best, “spiritual, not religious.” On the one hand, many outsiders to popularized yoga profoundly trivialize it by reducing it to mere commodities and impotent borrowings from or “rebrandings” of traditional, authentic religious products. On the other hand, many insiders frequently avoid categorizing yoga as religion, preferring to call it spiritual or to invoke other non-ex…

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