Religion Dispatches
…g for years requirements that he abide by basic building, fire, and zoning codes. So you go back to that Charisma story and the overblown rhetoric about religious persecution, and remind yourself not to take seriously the next thing you read or hear from the Rutherford Institute. And while you can’t be sure, you don’t recall reading that the heat and harsh conditions at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Tent City Jail had previously moved John…
Read More…tly gender-segregated customs of Mormonism are—like unwritten Sunday dress codes—traditional rather than doctrinal and human rather than inspired. It was also an opportunity to start a conversation about traditional gender inequalities in a community where feminism has been unnecessarily stigmatized as an excommunicable offense. (And for the record, it is not.) Because really, it’s not pants or the right to wear pants that tops the list of Mormon…
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…m the Rune Stone using such techniques as dowsing rods for divining hidden codes within the runes. Some of these new narratives describe large settlements of Christian Vikings who lived in Minnesota for centuries following Leif Eriksson’s arrival in Vinland. There is a ready market for such wild speculation on cable television, but Krueger notes that these tales of ancient European settlers effectively marginalize America’s actual original inhabit…
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…minated, the rejected, and the vilified. Having spent decades opposing new freedoms for gays, Christians now claim that gays are somehow stripping freedoms from them. Given the history between these groups, this claim demonstrates an incalculable level of chutzpah. I suggested earlier that Craig’s reasoning might be instructive to those interested in the arguments that drive the debate over same-sex marriage. Having now worked through that reasoni…
Read More…ties, barricading themselves within a bunker because they believed that barcodes on food packaging are Satanic. In a statement, Christian dairy tycoon Boyko-Veliky explained the crosses: Russian Milk is forced to place bar codes on its packaging, as without this, we will only be able to sell our goods at farms, not in stores. . . . By placing the cross on the bar code, we want to demonstrate our stance: We are with our Lord, Jesus Christ, and not…
Read More…as vetted by a number of scholars active in AAR —is not different from the codes of ethics already in place for most other academic organizations in every discipline. When I was a professor, I had to go through Institutional Review Boards for qualitative studies that involved interpretation of human feeling or practice. Moreover, Shukla is not making any radical departure from what AAR already does in practice, which is certainly not a case of rel…
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…lows its own members to divorce and remarry. The church has strict dietary codes, prohibiting coffee, tobacco, and alcohol, which presumably will not be available in heaven, but sees no need to legislate against their sale, even in Utah. There is the assumption that however wicked or wrong a certain behavior might be, it need not overwhelm the efforts of the Latter-day Saints to be righteous, and that, furthermore, God can adequately judge and pun…
Read More…nal issues, she tells us that grew up in a family where love was not given freely or unconditionally, with a hypercritical, withholding, unpredictable, at times vicious mother—alcoholic and suicidal. She adored her hard-drinking scientist father, following in his footsteps to become a scientist herself. Desperate to escape, she intellectualized her alienation, running into the arms of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Sartre and Camus, scientists and phil…
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…t waging a just war. “This game helped me understand the different ethical codes to a greater degree,” comments one. “Given that I attempted to play each class in a specific manner, I found it interesting how certain stories ‘rang’ with me, and others were discordant. It’s an interesting game, and I would almost advocate using it for educational purposes in high school.” If each player can acquire an embodied, lived experience of cultural ideals t…
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…e heard so much more widely and creep into secular life, from school dress codes to abstinence-only education. So those people are likely to be irritated. What alternative title would you give the book? Redemption in Topeka: How the World’s Meanest Church Decided to Stop Anti-Gay Picketing and Spend Their Talent and Energy Ending Racism in the Heart of America. Previous to his anti-gay work, Fred Phelps was a civil rights activist who led consider…
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