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Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

By Alda Balthrop-Lewis

…on of their wealth in charity, Thoreau called foul. “It may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.” He went on to use a striking analogy, “It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest.” Slave-breeder is, of course, a polite term for one who perpetrated…

Gambian Leaders Portray Anti-Gay Law as Defense of Islam, Ugandan Politicians as ‘Christmas Gift’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ights of the LGBT community.” France: Far-Right Looks to Putin for Funding TIME magazine reported that Marine Le Pen has received a multi-million dollar loan from a Moscow bank to fund the National Front Party. “At this stage, Russia is trying to influence French domestic policy,” says Jean-Yves Camus, a political researcher at France’s Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). If so, Putin’s strategy resembles the Soviet Union be…

Trump is Helping the Economy… The Apocalypse Economy

By Jonathan Root

…itch. But it seems that Bakker is more willing to play partisan games this time around. Even his wife, Lori, has come out in support of Trump, claiming that he’s the best candidate for women. Apocalyptic preaching isn’t new, and Bakker is appealing to a very particular subculture. Still, his long career points to a market for these messages, and his invocations of the 2016 election point to the way that political unease can offer a marketing oppor…

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…

Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Anthea Butler

…even have the courtesy to check Trayvon’s phone for his mom and dad’s telephone numbers because it’s just a black criminal’s body to them. While Zimmerman the trigger man slept in his bed, the police ordered a drug and alcohol test for Trayvon’s lifeless body. A black body that was representative of evil against the whiteness of George Zimmerman. I hesitated to write about this story, because there are many good stories about Trayvon and his pare…

Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…th hate from politicians and religious leaders seeking political power and cheap popularity.” She and more than 130 volunteers then distributed the magazine across the country and into some unlikely hands, including to Uganda’s Parliament, president, and other politicians, as well as churches and media outlets. Nabagesera says Bombastic has been a “big hit,” allowing her to attract correspondents in every country across the African continent. She…

Yes, It’s Worse To Be Gay in Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…a heroic level of bravery. The law that passed in June—which is, I think, best explained as cheap populist scapegoating—has served to activate and embolden widespread homophobia, which seems to me to have been previously often latent (the homophobia I encountered in Vladimir 10 years ago was none too aggressive). Phenomena like “Occupy Pedophilia” have appeared on the scene. Although it’s hard to say exactly how common anti-LGBT violence is in Ru…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…but a factory for ideas to arm them,” worship services were extravagant multimedia, fog machine-choked productions, in which Haggard used his pulpit to wage spiritual war against satanic forces, including the demon of homosexuality. “It would be devastating for the children of our nation and for the future of Western civilization,” he told Christianity Today in 2005, “for us to say that homosexual unions or lesbian unions or any alteration of that…

Google-Phonics, Or, ‘What Is the Sound of a Thousand Tech Workers Meditating?’

By Kevin Healey

…at becomes ever-more-perilous to travel as those blind spots multiply over time. Call it Google-phonics. It’s a term presciently coined years ago by another famous Jolly Good Fellow—none other than comedian-turned-banjo-virtuoso Steve Martin. On a track by that name off his 1979 album Comedy is Not Pretty, Martin mockingly plays the role of a gadget-happy free-spender in search of the perfect sound system. “I bought a stereo. Wow—two speakers. Wil…

Where Are the Pro-Life Reactions to the Romney/Stericycle Story?

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…nt allied with the abortion industry” didn’t turn up anything when I did a search for “Romney” and “Stericycle,” and the story wasn’t in their top headlines. Jill Stanek? Again, no mention in the top headlines and a site search turned up nothing. World Magazine, which is currently taking a critical stance toward the National Association of Evangelicals over the latter’s acceptance of a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanne…