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Death Couture: Not For Halloween Only

By Stephen Andes

…physical world via material objects. Although official Church teaching mandates a separation between sign (i.e. icons, etc.) and signified (i.e. the divine presence), in practice the two often merge. Both Roman Catholic modernizers and Protestant iconoclasts have for the last four hundred years tried to stress the transcendence of God’s presence—the absolute separation between the material and spiritual in the here and now. But sacred immanence c…

Rarefied Islamophobia: When Americans Duplicate the European Cultural Talk

By Jocelyne Cesari

…deniable that many of these changes were triggered by the arrival of large numbers of immigrants from Africa, North Africa, and Asia; as a result, cultural and religious institutions in Europe are facing many serious challenges. And yet even if this central assumption is true and Caldwell’s overall analysis of cultural and demographic evolution of Europe is correct, the author examines the questions within the primitive trappings of “The Green Per…

Imagine No Religion: Sustaining Morality Without God

By Konstantin Petrenko

…sort of moral consensus, and instead only leads to a dangerous clash of inflexible, theologically-based “absolutes.” Secular ethics, on the other hand, are accessible to all individuals, regardless of one’s religion or lack of belief, allowing for a dynamic cultural exchange and holding out hope that a consensus can be reached through continuous dialogue and debate. But a deeper problem is that the notion of religiously-based “objective values” i…

Mitt Romney’s Honesty Problem

By Joanna Brooks

…uld think and act tactically, but rather than risk appearing deliberative, flexible, and human, try instead to disable those who question him with the imperious force of his own assertion? How does this comport with what we know about his time at Bain Capital, or the particular tenor of his service as an LDS congregational lay leader? I don’t think Mitt Romney learned this at home. Candor forced his father, George Romney, into an early exit from t…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…years. I came about the time that folks from Burma began arriving in large numbers and uniting in membership with Crescent Hill, and much of my time in those early years was spent trying to figure out how in the world we might be able to be a unified body that includes people who don’t speak English, who have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but we reached a place a number of years ago where, whil…

Niqab and Short Shorts

By Hussein Rashid

…of protest is to wear the niqab and nothing else. Then, the women will get tickets, not for being nude, but for being clothed. In my opinion, that would show the absolute absurdity of the state trying to control women’s dress. I have written elsewhere that this sort of action, of controlling a woman’s body, is simply male penis worship run amok. These ladies, who call themselves Niqabitches, have done a great service in showing the inherent contra…

The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

By Aaron K. Kerr

…Candyman’s in town” This is the grateful seduction, sometimes for good, many times for ill, but real any way you slice it. Two more times for the Dead to, in the words of bassist Phil Lesh, “suck the last dance right out of you…” How much are those tickets to the very last gigs at Soldier Field this weekend going for? For real? You got to be kidding me! I could feed a family for a month for that price. But one can’t put a price on American Beauty…

The Prophet Amos on Unemployment and Our Leadership

By Peter Laarman

…can’t find any job; among younger males, especially African-Americans, the number is much higher—in many areas one in two workers is without work. Yet Congress, with a Democratic majority, can’t get it together to extend unemployment benefits. Our solons just flew out of town for a weeklong holiday vacation. Republicans, joined by Democratic deficit hawks, insist that any extension be “deficit neutral” and come out of unspent stimulus money. But…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…reduced to a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my parking tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of a courtesy than a necessity.” Gone, too, from Osteen’s theology is any mention of topics that might intrude on happy thoughts: Osteen avoids using current events in his messages so he doesn’t get sidetracked in controversy….

NPR “Ex-Gay” Report Neither “Fair” Nor “Balanced”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…people for “therapies” that can destroy them psychologically, while buying tickets to Toscano’s shows might result in some good belly laughs, but no pressure to convert. What makes this story so shameful, though, is how the true message is completely glossed over in the pursuit of finding out who is “right” and who is “wrong.” Both Wyler and Toscano are Christian men who were given the message early on in their lives that being gay or lesbian was…