Religion Dispatches
…ntorum is for “social sanity.” Here’s the text of the robocall, via the website JewsandChristianstogether.org: Hi, my name is Brian Camenker; I’m a Jew from Massachusetts. And, this is Darcy Brandon; I’m a Christian from California. If you believe as we do that marriage and sexuality should only be between a man and a woman, please help us stop Mitt Romney. As Governor, Romney signed “Gay Youth Pride Day” declarations, promoted homosexuality in ou…
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…ater pardoned by Ronald Reagan. But the man knew what he spoke of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loT_pYzi3Vw In sharp contrast to the bleakness of “Mama Tried” stands the deep hope of the greatest Christmas song ever written, “If We Make It Through December,” with its trusting assertion “I plan to be in a warmer town come summertime.” Haggard rarely name-checked the Lord in his songs, but he didn’t need to. You couldn’t listen to a line like tha…
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…me of Islam are not really Muslim. Thirty-seven percent say these perpetrators really are Muslim, while 13% offer no opinion. For more, visit www.publicreligion.org or check out PRRI’s Facebook page….
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…ferson Bethke of YouTube fame, who “love Jesus but hate religion.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY There are spiritual seekers who embrace bits and pieces of various traditions and don’t want to commit to just one. And there are Nones who are just plain indifferent to religion. What ties these diverse worldviews together is a deep commitment to what I call “worldview choice”—a belief that religious and secular worldviews are expression…
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…try. They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy.” https://www.instagram.com/p/CBA1P3gHpT_/?igshid=1qstwzxn87p2n I’m a pastor in the city that Drew Brees calls home and it’s from this perspective that I say Drew Brees’ comments were right. His comments were right not only because he spoke from his heart but because his comments, especially given the fact that they were made in the midst of everything that’s going on in our country,…
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…re victory, claiming that their side had won the War on Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgUaXo9URCM Whatever the recent skirmishes, this kind of controversy is not new. American disagreements about the celebration of Christmas reach back to the nation’s colonial beginnings—where ironically, it was a Christian group, Puritans, that offered the discouraging words. When the Church of England broke away from Roman Catholicism in the 1500s,…
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…t the mosques, the standard stuff—the stories that kept coming up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQr1Go9ldw&t=2s You work as an actor, a writer, a comedian, in a lot of creative spaces. What’s the line between free speech and bigotry? Wow. What is the line between free speech and bigotry? Look, there’s always going to be free speech, and it’s a fundamental right. We are allowed to speak our minds. But bigotry will always exist—there will always…
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…onship to Halloween. The movement began in 2002, and the organization’s website, www.jesusween.com, doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2012. But it’s still worth talking about, and not because it fits with the famililar “Ain’t those Evanglicals kooky?” meme. More recently, actor Kirk Cameron urged Evangelical families to approach Halloween, not quite as “Jesus Ween,” but along similar lines: You should have the biggest party on your block,…
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…Current Population Survey (CPS) Database, accessed Feb. 6, 2014 at http://www.census.gov/cps/. Population sums shown are in thousands.] What this means in raw numbers is that the 30% of Millennials who are religiously unaffiliated (15.86 million) are a somewhat smaller group than the 22% of GenXers (17.95 million) who are unaffiliated. Further, in terms of percentages, twice as many 18 to 29 year olds (31%) as 50-64 year olds (11%) is unaffiliate…
Read More…eir friends’ thinking is also the idea behind The NALT Christians Project (www.NotAllLikeThat.org). The project, following the model of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project, asks Christians to post videos of themselves explaining why their faith calls them to support for LGBT equality. The project has been launched by Christian author John Shore and activists Wayne Besen and Evan Hurst of Truth Wins Out. Cosponsors include Reconciling Ministries…
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