Search for "VIPREG2024 today 1xbet promo code South Africa"

Southern Baptists Embrace Minorities, but Not Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

Southern Baptists are feeling pretty good about themselves today. Eleven years after the denomination apologized to African-Americans for supporting segregation and slavery, it elected a black man as its first vice president of the convention—“the highest position yet held by an African-American” in the denomination, the New York Times notes. Fred Luter Jr. pastors a largely black church in New Orleans and is apparently an “overwhelming favorite…

A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

By Shalom Goldman

…ions are better than in Saudi Arabia.” He points to the status of women in today’s Iran. More than 60% of university students are women. And, unlike in Saudi Arabia, women in Iran drive. Kadivar delights in telling me that in the holy city of Qom, there are women cab drivers who specialize in taking families on excursions. But most of our conversation was about the murder of Rafiq Tagi. In an open letter to Ayatollah Lankarani, son of the author o…

A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

By Craig A. Ford Jr.

…of anti-Semitism and white supremacy, no matter where you are in the world today). Unlike these symbols that are based in reality, however, a thoughtful investigation into the “black mass” would have revealed that this is actually a symbol in search of a reality. Boston University professor David Frankfurter, in his award-winning 2006 book Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, argues that, when we apply the mos…

Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

By Haroon Moghul

…legal traditions, Islamic or otherwise, discussed consent in the way we do today. In the past, she said, “we don’t hear about consent in marriage, or in relationships where sex is lawful. What we do hear and read about is that anyone, slave or free, who is harmed, can take that case to a judge. A woman could go to a court and say her husband hit her, bruised her—she could get compensation.” In the Prophetic period, consent was often passive: Expec…

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…e lifespan was far shorter and average living conditions more squalid than today, outbreaks of plague were frequent, and death in childbirth was commonplace. In that context, it would have made no sense to say that pregnancy and childbirth were fundamentally safe, well-designed, healthy, blissful processes that if left alone would result in a healthy mother and baby. That idea wouldn’t come along until… Grantly Dick-Read and the early natural chil…

The Theology That Inspired the Poway Synagogue Shooting (and New Zealand) Remains Strikingly Commonplace

By Ivan Strenski

…action physically to replace them as inhabitants of the holy land. But who today knows what the Canaanites and Philistines reported about such self-serving Hebrew claims? In their turn, Christians likewise see themselves as superseding Jews as the Chosen People, establishing a New Israel, allegedly justified in doing so by the genius of Christian “fulfillments” of ancient Jewish prophecies, matched only by the uncanny anticipation those Jewish pro…

To Be Queer, Gifted, and Black: A Conversation with Theologian Pamela Lightsey

By Nyasha Junior

…with lesbians and gay persons being called queer in the pejorative sense. Today that term has been embraced, not by all, but by quite a few. Persons within the community self-identify, and by self-identifying they say they don’t want to be put into a box. They don’t want to use these binary categories of male and female, straight or homosexual. So when one says queer nowadays, one is intentionally pushing back against the binary conversations tha…

New Report: White Evangelicals are America’s Most Anti-Trans Demographic, But Encouraging Data Overall

By Chrissy Stroop

…in 2018. Support for trans boys competing on teams with cis boys is at 46% today, down from 61% in 2018. Here, too, religious (non)affiliation is a highly significant factor. As the report notes: The same trend occurs across all religious groups, with white evangelical Protestants least supportive of either male (26%) or female (8%) transgender students participating in high school athletic events with cisgender students who share their gender ide…

Pressure Grows on Obama to Reject Anti-LGBT Religious Exemption

By Sarah Posner

…rates calls made since 2011 for Obama to rescind the Bush executive order. Today’s letter, in contrast to yesterday’s letter from over 50 legal scholars, is more focused on framing religious freedom as a core American value that is protected, rather than endangered, by rejecting the religious exemption. The legal scholars focused more on constitutional law and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in making the case that neither Free Exercise Clau…

2010: What Did We Believe In?

By Gary Laderman

…c barrel, money rules our lives and guides our actions like no other force today. Unemployment, bailouts, national debt, foreclosures, bank regulation, layoffs, and entitlement programs—the list of economic concerns remains the same since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, but the upcoming social, cultural, and political battles over how best to deal with these concerns cuts straight to the heart of national identity—a point made dramatica…