Religion Dispatches
…such delicate matters. As previously mentioned with Judaism, however, because the pig is not actually being consumed and is being utilized to save a human life, we can suspect such a transplant would be considered mubah, or permissible. Of course, the question is bound to surface at some point as to whether they have to use a pig? Why not another animal so as to save the trouble of these religious debates? Unfortunately (or quite fortunately, d…
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…l world with adolescence hints at this as a kind of rite of passage—a time betwixt and between childhood and full adult responsibilities. Much like game worlds, it occurs within a space where actions have been stripped of real-world consequences, though from the first, we discover that Zoe has discovered ways to make what happens in this space count: she’s turned to it as a space of religious conversion and political activism. One of the recurring…
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…that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” [Note: In a puzzling move, the Trump campaign later tried to amend the statement to replace the phrase “entire existence” with “sad, miserable existence.”] In graduate school, I concentrated in political philosophy and ethics, w…
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…about the grace of God. But on the other hand, human beings are completely free to use their rational capacity to decide how best to live within the world. That is why their vocation in the world is so important. But as Lutherans engage in their vocation in the world, they are not promised to be able to know any better than non-Christians what is right or wrong, good or bad. This is why Lutherans cannot, on the basis of any secret or specialized r…
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…rtunity. Of the three, he thought religious freedom was the foundation because without freedom to think and believe, you could not have the other two. A republic could not work if government and church officials (what Jefferson referred to as an alliance of “kings, nobles, and priests”) were trying to control what we think or prescribe what was the “best” religion or which people were the “best” citizens based upon their religious beliefs. If peop…
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…out how people use their cellphones, they’re entering vague territory, because there’s no agreed-upon definition of “use.” I’d wager hard cash that if you asked the exact same question about churches after priming people to think of Bible apps, those opinions would be very different. “Oh, that kind of ‘use’! That’s generally okay.” From Etiquette to Ethics This brings us to our second insight, which is that it’s very hard to measure etiquette thro…
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…in part because they opposed his brutal regime—that murderously restricted free speech as well. When a writer is accused of blasphemy, it’s easy for us to be outraged. But when a writer is punished by a government we support, perhaps because that support advances our national security interests, we have rather less to say. Only recently, The New York Times extensively reported on the abuse, torture, solitary confinement, and even executions that a…
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…rganized religion (religio = binding) in their lives. Protestantism spawns free thought and free radicals (some of them toxic) the way a prism breaks light into uncountable and unclassifiable hues. So while it is definitely not fair to count the great unchurched free radicals of the 19th and 20th centuries as official Protestants, there is no doubt at all that, unofficially, that is just what many were: not just the towering Lincoln but also such…
Read More…go, so he quickly and rather inexplicably pivots to claiming that the truly important questions he must answer are actually about economic growth. And here you can see the free association at work: economic growth -> free market. Otherwise known as “teach the controversy,” not the science….
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…from the same evil corrupting our public life. And none of us will win the freedoms we deserve unless we do it together. Liberation is collective. This means that no person is free while their neighbor is shackled, but it also means that we will never break these chains without a universal and reflexive commitment to one another’s thriving. Abortion rights and gender care help people achieve the fullness of who they know they’re called to be. And…
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