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Millennials Put Off By Rigid, Judgmental Religion Offered … More Orthodoxy

…rches that demand orthodoxy—another word for holiness—are the ones that do best. That’s even true! Conservative churches do fare better these days than liberal ones, though the sociologists tell me that’s mostly the result of their later adoption of birth control. The cultural trends are the cultural trends, even if they do take longer to catch up with some groups than others. It makes a certain surface amount of sense, then, that Shrum would argu…

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Eyes on the Prize, Rainbow People! A Post-DOMA Challenge

…not a day to say, as one lesbian interviewed on NPR said, “they saved the best for last.” In fairness, the person interviewed was telling an otherwise compelling story about the need for queer people to make common cause with low-wage workers. She and her spouse are small-time farmers in the Central Valley: in that context they can feel how wrong it would be for them to say “thank you very much” to the Supremes and then proceed to ignore the econ…

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Open Carry Racism: The Right Wing Fever Dream that Predates Trump

…ers of which refuse to do so. Get Out may never have been fated to win the Best Picture Oscar, but it’s still the movie that best answers the question how did we get here? while pointing to the “black mold” in the basement. But what needs to be acknowledged is that while Trump is truly exceptional in his disregard for laws, norms, and institutions, he’s also a recognizable product of a half-century’s con game. Significantly, it was with Ronald Rea…

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Netflix’s Iranian ‘Messiah’ Is a Gift to Trump and His Evangelical Base

…ssia’s Middle Eastern allies than Gog itself. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series, and Ed Hindson, Dean Emeritus of the divinity school at Liberty University, devoted much of their 2007 book Global Warning to framing Iran as an evil Islamic threat to Israel, and through Israel to Christianity. Like other evangelical apocalypticists such as Joel Rosenberg (author of The Twelfth Imam series), LaHaye and Hindson cast the Iran…

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Capricology: Divine Madness

…n spend time together in the Dive smoking a hallucinatory substance which, best we can tell so far, seems to be legal—if not exactly respectable—in this society. Of course, you’ve heard the joke that you can tell you are watching a cable show if the sympathetic characters are using drugs. This imagery is still not going to be appearing on the major networks. I also continue to be very interested in some of the representations of games in the serie…

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How Are the “Nones” Raising Their Children?

…ove it. NYU Press invited me to have input, and this was the image I liked best. Mountains and sky are good symbols of spiritual journey, and the person climbing is carrying a child. Because we see only their backs, they can stand for anyone. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? One of my favorite books related to religion is Daniel Everett’s, Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes. Everett and his wife and children spent yea…

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Egypt Goes After Gays to Silence Islamist Critics; South Africa’s ‘Open Mosque’ is Closed; Global LGBT Recap

…sets out to restore peace and order in the Middle East, I do wish him the best of successes. And when Putin defends marriage and family at the UN, I also wish him all the best. There is not only black and white in this world. There are also many shades of grey. Scotland: Debate Over ‘Conscience’ Clause for Sex Ed Guidelines Among the policy debates that will be taken up now that the referendum on independence has been held is the ongoing developm…

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“We All We Got”: The Black Church As an Oasis in Baltimore’s Food Deserts

…time to change churches. In Baltimore, symbolic gestures on the pulpit are best complemented by concrete actions in our streets. Their hands forced, some of Baltimore’s black churches have stepped up to meet this demand. Prayer walks have been held by congregations at the same Penn-North intersection where CNN and others incessantly broadcasted images of a torched CVS as if it were a dying human being. In warmer months, New Bethlehem Baptist Churc…

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Bad Karma: Life Lessons From Earl

…the possibility that the United States as a nation has not lived up to the best of its democratic ideals, has not represented in its internal practices and foreign policies the commitment to freedom that fuels its rhetoric. And, while we’re at it, we might throw into the mix some attention to our materialism and its awkward and distorting presentation. There is something useful in examining the policies and practices of our nation and demanding th…

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(Ex-)Ex-Gay Activist Alan Chambers On His Prop 8 Epiphany and the Downfall of Christianity and Evangelicalism

…publicly renounced reparative therapy, they’re still preaching that “God’s bestfor gays and lesbians is celibacy and some still believe that God can change sexual orientation over time. What’s your response? It’s kind of a doublespeak. They want to be against what is publicly recognized as the most damaging sort of thing out there. But, they talk out of the other side of their mouth and support this. I think some of them are confused, but I thin…

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