Search for "bbc news cleantalkorg2.ru bbc news news word news usa Breaking News Live Updates Politics World News The New York Times"

Making Space For All on Aronofsky’s Ark

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…ope’s approval. Even the New Atheists got in on the action; whining in The New Yorker that the very existence of so many movies based on Bible stories indicates that Hollywood is actually fighting a war against atheism. But I also want to call upon Aronofsky to reconsider. The word “biblical”, according to Webster’s, just means “relating to, taken from, or found in the Bible.” Let’s take that word back. What all of these factions opposing the movi…

Those Cocky Secular Liberals!

By Sarah Posner

…“abomination,” in both the Hebrew Bible and the King James Version of the New Testament, is highly questionable: The word “abomination” is found, of course, in the King James translation of Leviticus 18:22, a translation which reads, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination.” Yet this is a thoroughly misleading rendition of the word toevah, which, while we may not know exactly what it means, definitely does not mea…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…oland” party formed a “Stop gender ideology” committee in parliament. The crusaders use the word “gender” in its English form and argue that it refers to a concoction of all the social changes the church finds unacceptable, including gay marriage and contraception. For several months, priests and Catholic commentators have been pushing the concept of “gender ideology” in the Polish media, and the highest church authority issued a letter titled “Th…

Religion, Lies, and Videotape: Planned Parenthood and the Latest Fake Sting

By Donna Schaper

…e any indication of the national mood—while going all out on abortion? The word relativism comes to mind. The word distortion again rears its ugly head. If murder is wrong, then murder is wrong. When I make moral arguments as a free agent—and I know many on the right don’t believe women have these prerogatives—I make them as a proud relativist. A Niebuhrian, even, one adult enough to know the truth that some tragedy often accompanies some virtue….

The Real Reason For “Vagina-gate”

By Jerry Faught

…r of Biblical Womanhood. Although Evans was told by her publisher that the word “vagina” would likely keep her books out of Lifeway’s stores, it is another word that better explains the ban: “fundamentalism.” The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are, across the board, hidebound fundamentalists who try to pass themselves off as conservatives. Unlike genuine conservatives however, fundamentalists hold to specific dogmas and then seek to i…

Arab Spring: Countering the Naysayers

By Maryam Jamshidi

…utions. In fact, many would hesitate to describe recent events in the Arab world as “revolutionary,” pointing instead to the persistence and continuing influence of old power structures. But massive, national-level political changes take time, and do not unfold according to a set playbook. Indeed, revolutions are as much about changes on the micro level as they are about macro political shifts. On the way to creating better, more open governments…

Tony Perkins: Atheists Can’t Be Chaplains

By Chris Stedman

…struction.” The confusion surrounding chaplains for the nonreligious isn’t new—or especially surprising. The popular connotations of the word chaplain are clearly religious; more often than not, they are explicitly Christian. But if you look, for example, at Harvard University—where I work as one of two Humanist chaplains alongside Greg Epstein—you will find nearly 40 chaplains representing a plethora of religious and philosophical communities, f…

The “Mormon Moment” Yields… Not So Much

By Joanna Brooks

…, that proportion is 42%. And when asked to give a one asked to give a one-word descriptor of Mormonism, the number of respondents offering a positive word like “good,” or “honest,” increased from 18% in 2011 to 24% in 2012. All of these gains were concentrated among Republicans voting for Romney, naturally. Still, the number one word survey participants associated with Mormons? “Cult.” And fully 27% of survey respondents still have no idea what…

Passover with Mohammed: A Jewish Journalist in Yemen

By Sam Kestenbaum

…o America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory for Islam. Part of me knew this was politics, the language of demagogues, but still I wondered, would the friends that I had made turn on me, curse me? “So, Passover is the story of Moses, Musa,” Khalid says, smiling. He knows the story, of course. “These are our prophets, too.” I feel relieved and also silly for hesitating to tell him about my heritage. “Do you know the story of Sana’a?” Khalid…

If Something About Trump’s Bible Photo-Op Felt Familiar There’s a Good Reason

By Karen E. Park

…on would do while leading a procession [right], or like Billy Graham at a crusade [below]. But Trump knows absolutely nothing about religious faith; so little that he can’t even fake it. Instead Trump held the Bible like a hawker selling an object on QVC. He displayed the Bible holding it first this way and then that way, making sure we saw the spine as well as the front and back. He didn’t open it or hold it reverently. He appeared to have never…