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God Wants You to Work Harder, and to Stop Complaining

By James Dennis LoRusso

…eproduced this aura of sacrality, as when one young lady stumbled into the wrong panel session, confiding in me “I thought I was attending a different panel, but I apparently the universe wants me to be here. So I’ll stay.” Corporate Mystics Over the course of three days, an amalgam of figures from the business world, leaders of faith traditions (“faith” consistently replaced “religion” throughout the conference) offered up a mixture of rich ideas…

The Bush Obama Faith-Based Office

By Sarah Posner

…ot particularly effective, not transparent, and hindered by constitutional problems. DuBois even used the very same rhetoric Bush faith-based office proponents used: that government agency assistance to faith-based groups in applying for grant money was necessary to “level the playing field:” “Part of our job is to ensure that there’s a level playing field — we don’t encourage anyone to favor faith-based groups over other organizations, but we do…

A Matter of Life and Debt: The Role of Religion

By Peter Laarman

…ts and students of color, urban neighborhood blight, stress-related health problems, declining family life and domestic violence—are directly related to systemic debt oppression. If the most urgent moral question of the 20th century was the question of color line, perhaps an equally urgent moral question for the 21st century is the debt line—a line not at all unrelated to ongoing race-based oppression. We can mumble and fumble our way around the e…

Rick Perry’s Jesus Imperative: A Report from Saturday’s Mega-Rally

By Sarah Posner

…point to the abolition of school prayer as another root cause of America’s problems. This, again, is a common religious right talking point. Late in the day, when members of the old guard—James and Shirley Dobson, Don and Lynda Wildmon, and Vonette Bright, the widow of Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright—were honored on the stage, Bright, to the delight of all ages in the audience, called for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public…

Taking the Economy Back From the Elites: Blessed Are the Organized

By Nathan Schneider

…ngs designed to get 8 to 12 people talking freely about their concerns and problems. But in Obama’s organization, “house meetings” appear to function as focus groups do in traditional campaigns. The campaign operatives already know what the issues are going to be, at least for the most part, and the point of meeting with supporters is to test out various ways of spinning those issues. That’s a top-down process, regardless of what it’s called. In 2…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…ed in 1937, has played a crucial role in the trajectory of the American left, leading to the election of Barack Obama. As Fischer, who nonetheless relies on the same demonizing, scapegoating ideology, protests, Breivik doesn’t share his view of Christianity or his strategy of “solving problems” through “public policy rather than mass murder.” But while conservatives object that Breivik isn’t a real Christian, he certainly seems to have been motiva…

AFA’s Fischer Calls Breivik’s Manifesto “Accurate”

By Sarah Posner

…e. But clear thinking Westerners and every Christian I know believes these problems can be solved through public policy rather than mass murder. Breivik’s angst was caused by the presence of so many Muslims in Norway and Europe, which he correctly observes is leading to “cultural annihilation.” But he blames their presence not on the Muslims themselves but on the “cultural Marxists” and their obsession with diversity and unrestricted Islamic immig…

Excuses, Excuses: The Polite Regrets of Governors Bailing on Perry’s Prayer Rally

By Sarah Posner

…re conversion to Christianity is prayed for, or that posits that America’s problems (as defined by them) can be fixed by 70,000 people getting on their knees in a sports stadium, courtesy of an organization that has boycotted the company that makes American Girl dolls because it supports “a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group,” or Hallmark after it started producing same-sex marriage greeting cards, and which employs a radio host who compares…

Austrian Court Okays Head-Colander in Driver’s License: Is Pastafarianism Becoming a Religion?

By Joseph Laycock

…astafarians created charts showing a direct relationship between declining numbers of pirates and rising global temperature. In 2008, Pastafarians organized “Skepticon,” an annual convention for skeptics and atheists held in the heart of the Bible Belt. FSM also gained significant support in Europe. In 2007, FSM appeared in a Council of Europe report on efforts to teach creationism in schools. Success has altered the polemics of FSM as Pastafarian…

WikiLeaks Strikes the Vatican, a Camel in the Pews, and Luke Skywalker Tolerance

By Michael J. Altman

…e like an $11 million Christmas tree. WikiLeaks is giving the Vatican some problems. Confidential cables released by the website claim that the Vatican pressured Ireland to grant immunity to church officials involved in the clergy abuse investigation and is responsible for hostilities toward Turkey in its bid to join the European Union. The cable states that “allowing a Muslim country into the EU would further weaken [then Cardinal Ratzinger’s] ca…