…ing a black Christian woman in America. “To make lemonade out of lemons is code for powerful spiritual practice in the hands of women. Since the beginning of chattel slavery in this country, black women have been magically making something from nothing, conjuring up lives for themselves and their families with nothing but crumbs, dust and ashes.” The water imagery in “Lemonade” is about barely keeping one’s head above water after betrayal, heartbr…
…rl Sagan, and Dan Brown’s popular religious mystery thriller, The Da Vinci Code. Sagan has a reputation as a proto-New Atheist, but his novel suggests he was intensely sympathetic to religious experience and authority. By the end of his novel he has his scientist protagonist embark on a career of “experimental theology” after she has discovers the “signature” of God in the very structure of the universe. At the same time, Sagan was not impressed b…
…e: Homosexuality decriminalized The BBC reports on the country’s new penal code, which drops the colonial-era law on “vices against nature,” making Mozambique “one of the few African countries where same-sex relationships are legal.” Analysis from BBC’s Milton Nkosi: Mozambique’s move to decriminalise homosexuality looks in step with recent changes elsewhere, such as Ireland and the US. But Mozambique is also following the likes of neighbouring So…
…Florin HIlbay asked the Supreme Court to dismiss a challenge to the Family Code ban on same-sex couples marrying. The government’s lawyer said the petition was flawed because Jesus Nicardo M Falcis III, the gay man who filed it could not show “injury in fact” from the law and had not included Congress in his petition. Falcis also said that homosexuals, like heterosexuals, can also fulfill the essential marital obligations laid down by the Family C…
…atican, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to issue a code for how Christians ought to evangelize. No word on how this code effects the use of Chick Tracts. A village in the Philippines celebrates its patron saint, John the Baptist, with a Mud People Festival. Reminds me of my weekend at Bonnaroo 2004. The Pope tweeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism…
…e to mine.” Brunei: US officials discuss human rights, death-to-gays penal code U.S. officials, including the ambassador to Brunei, discussed human rights issues with Bruneian officials at a November 30 meeting in London. The new penal code includes a death penalty for those convicted of sodomy. Northern Ireland: Legal challenge to marriage ban moves forward Two gay couples were granted permission for a judicial review of their challenge to laws t…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…But the center is an assertion, not a fact; an etiquette, not a place. Its code, its theology, is most fully embodied in Americanized Arminianism—a Protestant tradition of good works and propriety, “distinguished liberals” and polite realpolitik. “Arminian moralism,” notes historian Charles Sellers in his study of Finney’s age, The Market Revolution, “sanctioned competitive individualism and the market’s rewards of wealth and status.” It did not e…
…shrouded in secrecy, came into the spotlight after Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code hit the New York Times bestseller list. The novel suggested that the women in Opus Dei are “forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay,” and remarked upon the broad subjugation of women in the order. And while the novel is fictional, the alleged “misconceptions” that arose in the fallout of the media attention surrounding The DaVinci Code provided much of the…
…ling through the expert reports—separating the agenda-driven items and the code words from the sound pedagogical-based suggestions. The appointed reviewers will then write draft curricula based on the recommendations, and present them to the Board of Education. In August, the board members will begin the first round of hearings to review the proposed changes. “I don’t see at all that we will divide into factions,” said new board Chairwoman Gail Lo…
…ne. Humans should be mature enough to develop and maintain our own ethical code informed by scientific knowledge of its consequences, he argues, rather than rely on an ancient moral code inscribed in scriptural texts of human origin composed in a different era for reasons that no longer apply. Dawkins finally brings the story to where Rev. Adam Sedgwick feared that it would end 150 years ago when he read this pre-publication copy of Origin of Spec…
