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New Anti-Gay Snake Oil for Religious Right

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…/academic, and total competence and signiﬁcantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts …” Being a lesbian, Gartrell obviously has a vested interest in those ﬁndings, right? Maybe, but her research has been backed up by the likes of the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of Social Workers, “who all…

Is the Internet the End of Religion?

By Andrew Aghapour

…e, and thereby evolve. Daniel Dennett took this theory up in his 2006 book Breaking the Spell, and has long advocated for a post-religious world. A taping of the event just went up on YouTube, and it is full of armchair speculations, vague references to scientific studies, and good-natured ribbing of religious ignorance. If an hour of vaguely offensive rambling by older men is something you can only handle on Thanksgiving, here are some telling cl…

Romney, Tisha B’Av, and LDS Temples

By Sarah Posner

…isha B’Av, and claimed, “What better way for the Governor to understand the opportunities and the threats to Israel than to be there on a day when the people of Israel and Jews around the world commemorate and mourn the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem twice in their history.” The post notes that Romney will be breaking the fast with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where they probably will not discuss Mormon architecture….

Crowdfunding Joplin Mosque Project Blows Past Its Goals

By Katie Toth

…ed at St Phillip’s Episcopal church on Wednesday to host an iftar, or fast-breaking meal, for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Mosque member Rizwarm Ahmad said she found the gesture heartwarming: “I feel like we are welcome here. Reassuring us that we are not alone in it and the community has shown that we are all in this together.” Missouri Muslims are dedicated to preventing a similar attack from happening in the future. According to a…

Rev. Sun Myung Moon Dead at 92

By Sarah Posner

…on should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls “Godism”—with him in charge. The man crowned “King of Peace” by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church’s Unification News: “Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father.”…

All Candy, No Jesus: Halloween in America

By Mary Valle

…went to the cemetery. As the night went on, the pastor “lit candles, told stories of his father, and saw that as a healing moment and began to develop relationships with the people.” We Americans don’t like to talk about death or the dead, though, really. Our bodies are disappearing in clouds of ash and our oldish cemeteries crumble, untended. One of my aunts recently offered to send me some old letters and a picture of her parents if I wanted th…

The Revelation of Kurt Andersen: With ‘Evil Geniuses’ a Media Mandarin Discovers Plutocracy

By Peter Laarman

…n a multipolar political culture, and they always tend to get just enough crumbs from the tables of the truly rich to make their thoroughgoing conversion unlikely. But nothing would please me more than to see many more people in this group begin to see the light. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than to see a much wider rejection of the highly doubtful idea that we can continue to live with a vicious class system, provided that the cast of…

What Passover Taught Me About Being Black

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…ot uncommon to hear an African American assert that “Black people are the true chosen people.” It’s become a regular occurrence for an African-American celebrity, entertainer, or athlete to post to their social media account that they’ve uncovered the “hidden truth” that Black people are “real Jews” to the chagrin of the mainstream media which, in a predictable knee jerk reaction, label them anti-Semites and hatemongers. Simply put, Hebrew Israeli…

Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

…stinctly women-centric—a series written by a woman for women. As such, the stories of Fanpires can shed light on what women are lacking in their religious experience—and what leads them to sacralize Twilight, even as many of them remain in traditional religious communities. Erzen’s 2009 online survey, completed by almost 600 fans, shows that 98 percent of the US Twilight fanbase is made up of women; eighty percent identify as nondenominational Chr…

What Will Orthodox ‘Republicanity’ Look Like?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ed most eloquently here on RD that Democrats need to get better at telling stories than at crunching the numbers, in this battle of the budget, the numbers actually matter. Hell, it’s a fight about numbers. And balance. And the virtue of justice. What this latest budget battle, and the question of raising the debt ceiling, and the straw polls are revealing, is just how Tertullian a wing of the Republican Party has become. It not only offers absurd…