Religion Dispatches
…he unfolding horror in Iraq, which has been a “wonderful” help to groups like Al-Qaeda, playing right into their hands. No more situations like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Money poured into Afghanistan and Palestine. A solution to Kashmir. No more short-term solutions for cheap oil. In Iraq and in Lebanon last summer we saw that our big armies are no longer viable against guerrilla and terror attacks. Diplomacy is essential. But suspicion of the…
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…n North Carolina. Referring to Bakker’s theological “feel-good stance” as “cheap grace,” Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League attributed Bakker’s preaching of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free…
Read More…illac” insurance plans that will be taxed under this new law—and “it ain’t cheap!” she proclaimed. As a good Republican, she believes in the self-regulating power of an unencumbered free market. If insurance companies are allowed to compete freely with one another, she figures, then insurance premiums will go down and people will have more choice. She noted that about 10 companies compete for her health care dollar each year when they have open en…
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…have been kept down at the very bottom in order for the American System of cheap labor to function. Although Henry Clay opposed slavery in theory, the need for this ongoing subjugation was most certainly in the mind of The Great Compromiser who coined the term “American System” during the expansionist years of ‘Indian removal’ and a related Second Middle Passage that took over one million people in shackles from the Chesapeake to the rich bottomla…
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…us have drawn their share of criticism. “Some Christians think we are just cheap harlots and tell us so,” she says. “But to be honest, we really don’t care.” Even the television show, which begins with a warning about its potentially disturbing content, seems to favor sex over religion, the hookers over Jesus. “The parts that you will see is what [Investigation Discovery] chose to portray,” Lobért explained to The Christian Post: “There are a lot…
Read More…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…
Read More…credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign energy sources, having failed to turn to renewables while mindlessly pumping more cheap petroleum into our veins. Like other critics of the new encyclical, Brooks chalks up the pope’s hostility to capitalism as the product of naivete or perhap…
Read More…tween the bunnies-and-eggs version of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always con…
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…ational movement. Masonic initiations included some amount of mild ritual hazing, intended to disorient the initiate and prepare him for entry into a new social and spiritual realm; in the 1600s and 1700s, these rituals created a buzz of fear and suspicion around the Masons, which only added to their popularity. Masonic lodges proliferated in America from the 1720s onward. They were a religious movement as well as a social networking sensation, a…
Read More…hey don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed. At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake: Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now? I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Ameri…
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