Religion Dispatches
…to the baptism of Jesus—regrettably missing some cool stories from the New Testament of Jesus confounding the religious teachers at the temple) carries us along mostly from one sword fight and rampaging Babylonian/Persian/Roman legion to another, knocking the Jews about from one place to another. How many slow-motion scenes of the sword being pulled out from the dying man do we need to get the point? I began to feel like a parent telling a kid to…
Read More…e No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, eliminating taxpayer dollars from funding embryonic stem cell research, or defunding Planned Parenthood—the signers of the GOProud letter have a problem with.” Actually, GOProud, like most fiscally conservative voters, are, according to their website, concerned with cutting capital gains and corporate tax rates, free-market health care reform, and privatizing Social Security. Oh, they want “Don’t Ask, Don’t…
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…em for the exact moment in time that they’re in. Their life wasn’t a coincidence or an accident. Raise them up to know the power they walk in as children of God. Train them up in the authority of His Word. Teach them to walk in faith knowing that God is in control. Empower them to know they can change the world. Don’t teach them to be fearful and disheartened by the state of the world but hopeful that they can do something about it. Every person i…
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…cency. I strongly disagree. But, I’ve been asked: how can this reaction be compatible with basic human compassion for all? How can a Christian like myself, coming out of a “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek” tradition not hope and pray for Trump’s full recovery? How can I, an Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at Marquette University say that I do not hope for his full recovery or that of newly Covid-19 positive Republican Senators, the…
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…in the future has seen mounting public intolerance towards the local LGBT community coming from the pulpit and parliament. Last week yet another private members motion was filed by Anthony Eden in the Legislative Assembly on the possibility of legalised same-sex unions or gay marriage, which was backed by all of the independent MLAs. This time Eden is calling for a referendum. A previous motion asking government to confirm its commitment to marri…
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…rica-hating black Christian preacher. As a 2007 Pew Survey shows, in presidential elections, being a Muslim is really, really bad, while being (the right kind of) Christian is, unsurprisingly, quite good. Congressional races like Linda McMahon’s, however, are obviously not the same as presidential races, as the election of the first Muslim congressman demonstrated back in 2006. But candidates at any level need to hold the “right” views about reli…
Read More…ntolerable if not immoral and illegal. But it’s not just the international community that finds the occupation immoral and illegal; Gushee and Stassen accuse their evangelical brethren of the sin of underwriting human rights abuses and ensuing violence: Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression o…
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…om are single mothers. They embodied Jesus—while clergy send them to hell Sunday after Sunday. In kind, the holiest place in St. Louis City is not a church but rather a coffeehouse on the corner of Grand and Arsenal—where a white lesbian and her children feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the naked and give refuge to a movement that you closed your doors to. And through all of this, I am ashamed on most days to call myself a preacher. Neverth…
Read More…aim to what I’m positive is a viable project sure to be eligible for arts funding. Ready? King Lear, starring Florida congressman Cliff Stearns as the title character, Planned Parenthood as Cordelia, and “documented lack of corruption in how federal funding is handled” as “love.” With all of the dialogue changed to lolcat. Here’s how it would go down: King Stearns: I haz a big pile of fedril munny. Iz fun! I chases it! Iz funn! If I can haz proof…
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…rs quite plainly delivered his message without pandering, and without tiptoeing around his impassioned critique of greed and political corruption. He managed to do this without the well-worn religious pabulum used by politicians who unimaginatively talk about how faith informed their political views, making their speeches about proving something about themselves, rather than articulating a political program. Yes, he cited the Bible. And yes, he pr…
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