Religion Dispatches
…Their very existence tends to enable the alcoholism of a portion of their customer base. The fact of the matter is that people who lack self control are often enabled in their addictions by buffets and bars. But at least bars often have a policy of not serving obviously inebriated people. Buffets will let you eat until you explode. As I contemplated the commonplace nature of obesity in South Central PA, and its prevalence among Christians and non…
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…donor despite your intention to do so; as noted above, only 3 out of every 1000 donors die in exactly the right way for their organs to be useful. But you can help transplant patients in other ways. You could be proactive in being the social support for a transplant patient, especially if you know that patient, including going to medical appointments with them—both before they need an organ and after the transplant. Or, you could offer space to a…
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…for critical inquiry. And, in addition to the petition in support of Dr. López Prater issued by a group of academics specializing in Islamic Studies and allied fields, both the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and even the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have issued statements of support. They’re rightfully concerned about the stifling of academic freedom in universities. But we should also be concerned because the university shou…
Read More…e 1860, with a brief, stiff, drop between the end of World War II and about 1960. Since 1980, they’ve been declining again, in part because fewer people are getting married at all. And even the scriptures Gushee builds his argument around demonstrate that divorce isn’t any kind of newfangled invention. That Jesus has to remind his listeners that Mosaic law allowed divorce for “hardness of heart” indicates that even in his day, some people saw marr…
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…iven that some angry laypeople’s proof is mostly vibes and not facts, I’ve written a template with linked evidence that they can use to send to Amazon. **LotR quotes taken from JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, Return of the King. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, and Fellowship of the Ring. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. *** Special thanks to Drs Erik Wade, Ambereen Dadabhoy, Sunny Singh, and…
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…bers lined up and passed the cases of water into the building and up the stairs, bucket-brigade style. It made a rather impressive little mountain, there in the church hall. It took us several years to give that water away, but eventually we succeeded. Most of it went to members of visiting volunteer work teams from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance who bunked in our church hall. They drank it at their work sites. The cases of water — a hodgepodge…
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…ruct neighborhoods, carve up communities, and channel resources, goods and services along racial lines. Such barriers feed our fears and teach us to live comfortably in the racial lies that have guided the thinking of so many Americans for centuries. We have learned to structure our fear geographically and unleash it through police violence set up to protect our spaces. Land developers, civil engineers, city planners, real estate agencies, builder…
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…t begin to take action.” Then in 2005, Donohue struck gold when a Wal-Mart customer service employee emailed a woman who complained about the store changing “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays” and told her: “The majority of the world still has different practices other than “Christmas” which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. … Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses [sic], mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from…
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…ation of pioneers, I believe, as well, there is nowhere we can go from His spirit.” Alluding to Psalm 139:10, he avowed that even in the heavens, “His hand will guide us.” The hand of God aside, Pence envisions commercial space companies building platforms “where the government will be a tenant and a customer, and not the landlord.” Pence cited this same verse from Psalm 139 to legitimate the mission of the administration’s newly formed Space Forc…
Read More…ical objections to homosexuality.” Evangelicals make up a disproportionate number of military chaplains relative to the numbers among the troops or the general population. And if evangelicals disproportionately oppose repeal, then it stands to reason that a more evangelical chaplaincy would, too. The military already has a serious problem with aggressive evangelizing which shouldn’t be compounded by yielding to an evangelical panic over repealing…
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