Religion Dispatches
…Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000.” Cizik has come under fire from a host of longtime evangelical leaders, For his work on the environment, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Paul Weyrich—the Godfather of the New Right and Gary Bauer “tried last year, unsuccessfully, to get Cizik fired from his job of 26 years,” DeGette reported. They have disparaged Cizik for having a…
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…are typical of fascist cultures.) The proximity of the term “Kali Yuga” in online communities to the far Right has been analyzed by scholars using the example of 4chan. It’s troubling when this ideology is mainstreamed through figures like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, who runs a hugely successful podcast on Spotify. For Carlson, the alleged decline of conservative values, and thus the decline of America, can be explained directly by the effemin…
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…side of some free speech absolutists, meanwhile, lies a quite fanciful and underthought understanding of no less than how language and meaning work. I’m not suggesting for a moment that, by thinking in terms of speech acts, we will find an ideal and settled set of rules by which to determine the sorts of speech and speakers that should be banned. Rather, that by appreciating racist, misogynist speech as specific types of actions in specific contex…
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…lars to interrogate what plausibility structures serve as dominating, even compulsory, guides for spiritual seekers awash in a world where traditional religious doctrines lack exclusive grip. According to Lofton, Oprah—who tells her audience what to buy, what to wear, what to read, and what to eat to achieve Your Best Life Now—is one effective guide, paving a way through the onslaught of consumer choices. The difference, of course, is that Google…
Read More…that wouldn’t cause the leaders of his church such headaches, there’s the undeniable fact that all past efforts to get people, both in and out of The Church, to stop using the term Mormon for the church and its members have failed. For instance, a 1982 instruction manual lamented, “We feel that some may be misled by the too frequent use of the term ‘Mormon Church.’” I was in college at the time and extremely active at the LDS Institute of Religio…
Read More…ip exemption was too narrow. Last year, though, when this issue was first being contested, there were suggestions that some organizations wanted no part of providing the coverage, even if they weren’t incurring the cost of it. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops today issued a statement that it was studying the proposed rule. Thomas J. Reese, S.J., Senior Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and a frequent commen…
Read More…’m guessing the these same dissenters would be shocked by how that loyalty test is now a litmus test for American public health policy. And even more shocked by how some non-Catholics seem more enamored of it than American Catholics themselves. At yesterday’s hearing, Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois (D), chuckled as Bishop Lori insisted that the Church isn’t opposed to couples spacing out pregnancies, as long as they do it via natural family plannin…
Read More…hole different story. That’s not applicable to what — what the role is of being the president or a senator or any other job. 2 Gingrich: Now, I happen to think that none of us should rush in judgment of others in the way in which they approach God. And I think that all of us up here I believe would agree. (APPLAUSE) But I think all of us would also agree that there’s a very central part of your faith in how you approach public life. And I, frankly…
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…e driving down through a fairly empty area of the Mara, the road curves around a mound to the left ahead, when a figure—larger and larger, closer and closer—works its way towards us. We stop the car. The male lion, left side of his face scarred, walks down the road. He walks calmly three feet away from the rover, stops for a good few minutes, breathes deeply, and keeps walking. A chill runs down your spine at this encounter—there is nothing more a…
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…ly, I signed up for the Boy Scouts. In an instant Ms. Garcia, my Cub Scout den mother, helped me understand that all of the boys in her group were equal—equally naughty and equally guilty of wreaking havoc, but still equal. At the same time, the Cub Scouts taught me to be proud of how I was different. I had a different religion, and my scout leaders encouraged me to tell my peers about it. Before long, my parents and pack leader were helping me co…
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