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UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

…off from the main Shiite branch of Islam.” The fact that there is a larger number of non-Isma’ili Shi’ah does not make them the main branch. If the central belief of Shi’ism is the belief of Imamah, then the only group with a present, living Imam are the Isma’ilis, making them the main group. The point is that there are many ways to claim superiority, but the reality is most Muslims have lived with various other communities of interpretation. The…

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Travolta Airlifts Scientology, Supplies, to Haiti

…pastoral care.” Their counseling services included promoting their hotline number on Fox News under the title “National Mental Health Assistance.” In 2002, Tom Cruise and executives from Scientology’s FASE (Foundation for the Advancement in Science and Education) launched “Downtown Medical” (also called “New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project”). This facility offered FDNY firefighters and other recovery workers the opportunity to partake i…

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In a Powerful Statement Black Presidents and Deans Say: No More Stolen Black Lives!

…cannot come to fruition in the absence of justice for Black people in the United States and around the world. We cannot and will not be silent while threats are continuously uttered by the highest political leadership in our country, nor will we watch the ongoing murders of Black people by police officers whose chief duty is meant to be “to protect and serve.” In his most recent conversation with the nation’s governors Trump’s words read as an en…

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Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

Another survey, another indication that religious life in the United States can no longer be captured by surveys. According to “Faith in Flux,” a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Americans change their religious affiliation at least once in their lives, and the largest-growing group in what the report poetically describes as the “churn within American religion,” is the “unaffiliated”—an amorphous community of former Cat…

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Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

…ople who aren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal sch…

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Change v. Change at NPR

…ebate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded religious therapists. However, even if Spiegel had correctly identified the nature and participants in the debate, she still would not have gotten it quite right. To his credit, Schumacher-Matos does a better job when he reviews material given to him by Spiegel and her editor Anne Gudenkauf. Among other things, Schumacher-Matos read an article…

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Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

…nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hit, a tsunami followed that killed those who had rushed to the beaches in fear to avoid the havoc of the earthquake. The cat…

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Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life: Rep. King Revives Manchurian Candidate

…ndly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life.   In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there really are… Rep. Peter King (R-NY), minus 45 years f…

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Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

…r prayers. But these ultra-devout performers share a peculiar space with a number of other artists whose personal faiths are inconsequential to their public personae but whose fluency in the holy plays out in, well, mysterious ways. Lana Del Rey’s catalogue runs deep with both religious imagery and sentiment; waves of apostasy crash over moments of divine revelation and then reverse course back into faith again. She may have claimed “God’s dead…[a…

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Ideology is More Than Skin Deep: Why I Can’t Get Along To Go Along

…der to bring them into the fold gently. This tantalizing idea fails on any number of levels. For example, a quick scan of history finds Pope Clement scolding the Corinthians for their argumentativeness 50 years or so after Paul wrote to them. So much for the ideal of unity. It also misrepresents the scriptural witness on conflict. On issue after issue throughout the Old and New Testaments, conflicts are not synthesized, not transformed, often not…

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