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The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

…ing, we are invited to enter a world that exists beyond the status-quo, a world at once captivating and sinister. Poetry dismantles the strictures of conventions. The name of the band—at once grateful and dead— is such a combination of words. A metaphor brings new insights when two seemingly paradoxical categories are brought together, e.g. rock ‘n’ roll band and environment (ushered in above). At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics we…

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Romney to Talk Mormonism Tonight: Risky?

…Back from my Bloggingheads hiatus, I talk with Get Religion’s Mollie Hemingway about whether Mitt Romney’s plan to discuss his Mormonism tonight at the Republican National Convention benefit his candidacy: And we also discussed the significance of the fact that Barack Obama is the only Protestant on both presidential tickets:  …

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McChurch Picks Up Progressive Endorsements

…ine is an event co-sponsor—no small potatoes considering the mainstream cachet of Jim Wallis, the founder /editor of Sojourners and author of the chart burner, God’s Politics. And McLaren has friends outside the faith box too. The Sierra Club is signed up. You tell me the last time people paid for tickets to a preacher-meets-politico-meets-tree-hugger event. Observing, then, the McLaren-brand machine gurgling and chirping right along, a fair quest…

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NPR “Ex-Gay” Report Neither “Fair” Nor “Balanced”

…people for “therapies” that can destroy them psychologically, while buying tickets to Toscano’s shows might result in some good belly laughs, but no pressure to convert. What makes this story so shameful, though, is how the true message is completely glossed over in the pursuit of finding out who is “right” and who is “wrong.” Both Wyler and Toscano are Christian men who were given the message early on in their lives that being gay or lesbian was…

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Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

…e off, but perhaps knock them on the head. I want to open their eyes to a world they’ve been missing, the world of science in the Dark Ages.  While working on The Abacus and the Cross, for example, I found this paragraph in a history published in 1999 by a well-known volcanologist:   Scholarly work on the nature of the Earth ceased with the end of the Classical period and the fall of the Roman Empire in the Dark Ages (ca. AD 400 to 1000), and it c…

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The Prophet Amos on Unemployment and Our Leadership

…can’t find any job; among younger males, especially African-Americans, the number is much higher—in many areas one in two workers is without work.   Yet Congress, with a Democratic majority, can’t get it together to extend unemployment benefits. Our solons just flew out of town for a weeklong holiday vacation. Republicans, joined by Democratic deficit hawks, insist that any extension be “deficit neutral” and come out of unspent stimulus money. But…

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Houston’s Pastor Subpoenas: A Meme Made for Fox News

…erendum petition were invalid, the petitioners no longer had the requisite number of signatures to place the referendum on the ballot. The subpoenas, served on pastors who are not litigants in the lawsuit, seek a broad range of documents and communications, including sermons, regarding their statements on homosexuality, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), and the petition process. Represented by the religious right legal firm Alliance Defen…

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Community Organizing and Symbolic Electioneering

…n media events. Most major decisions about the composition of presidential tickets — and even policy platforms — are made well before the speaker hits the rostrum. The delegates serve a largely symbolic role, and the speakers’ real audience is the electorate at large, following (or so both political parties hope) convention coverage at home on television and the Internet. Thus, the rhetoric that emerges from presidential nominating conventions sho…

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The Trouble With Francis: Three Things That Worry Me

…n-off patriarchy into one of the most inviting, benevolent monarchies the world has seen in modern times. But substantive structural and doctrinal issues do not evaporate just because the pope does not wear Prada. Surely some of the “credit” for this PR blitz goes to former Fox News and Time writer, Opus Dei member and Midwestern Catholic, Greg Burke. He became senior communications advisor to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in June 2012, well…

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