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Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

…missionaries, to as many as 3,000 students a year. This semester, more than 800 students are registered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to address racist and sexist content taught in Bott’s classes, and many are outraged and embarrassed by his rogue remarks to the Washington Post, say sources at the university. “Dr. Bott…

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As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

…cently as 2008, white Christians comprised 54% of the population, but that number is 44% today. More immediately, this legislation lifts language directly from former President Trump’s executive order targeting CRT, which banned the use of so-called “divisive concepts” and introduced the white “discomfort” criteria. Biden repealed this executive order on his first day in office. The Florida bill, like the other bills, is part of a coordinated Fran…

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Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

…the attendant talking snake, or in a man (Jonah) swallowed by a whale (or, really a “big fish”). These are the problems he keeps seeing: conservative religious people actually believe the myths of their traditions. But then Religulous splices in images of explosions, violent street demonstrations, and other aggressive activities. So, what’s the relationship between people who actually believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and suicide bombing…

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Note for Today

…ps, dresses, and scarves. I feel like I need one more scarf. Not for sheer number, but for style; there are so many styles, and one has to decide what works best individually. I have my long prayer scarves that do not need any pins to be neatly kept in place. But they are really long, and I wish I had at least one as neat, but shorter. I want to be hands-free and secure at the same time. I have long rectangular shapes that get draped, and I will u…

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On the 40th Anniversary of Hyde, A Theological Defense of Reproductive Justice

…have one dollar to my name, what has been communicated to me? That I don’t really matter to God, and so God is not going to bless me. It all ties into the same neoliberal ideology—that if you really want it, you would have it. If you don’t have it, it’s because you’re not doing what you need to do to get it. That ignores all the different systems of oppression in place that keep people from prospering in the way that they should. If you are preach…

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Watching Preachers’ Daughters Right After the Boston Bombings While Teaching a Class on Augustine’s Confessions

…f they do so using language and concepts that I disagree with. And I don’t really want to counter the reductive “purity” rhetoric with something reductive of my own, like a cheap criticism that Christianity is anti-sex and anti-body. Which brings me to Augustine’s Confessions, and specifically, reading Augustine’s Confessions with my Intro Theology class this week. Internet, I love Augustine Confessions. I love, love, love, love Augustine’s Confes…

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Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

…d inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out af…

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Yes, It Can Be Hard to Be an Atheist in America; Now We Have the Data

…saulted over their unbelief, although for African-American respondents the number is 2.5%. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents experienced threats of violence, and 2.5% experienced vandalism (14.2% and 3.2%, respectively, for Latinx respondents). None of these facts make the experience of “coming out” as nonreligious the same as coming out as LGBTQ, but they do nonetheless show that disclosing one’s nonreligious identity can be fraught and risky dependi…

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The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

…her “everybody’s gal.” In wartimes she’s carried a sword, placed an urgent phone call for financial help, and even scolded her citizenry. As a mascot for our country, she’s been given the face of a skull on the streets of Tehran and been beheaded by Trump in a famous Der Spiegel cover from earlier this year. In the religious and cultural imagination of America, she’s been denounced as a demonic idol, revered as a Wiccan goddess, reimagined as a Ch…

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Conservative Rep Grills Oklahoma Personhood Sponsors

…tors are caught in the middle, and the voters themselves are… well… making phone calls and holding marches, because what else is there to do? (When I called the office of one member of the Public Health Committee to register my opposition to SB-1433, the staffer on the phone said, “Goodness, it seems like everyone in Oklahoma is calling.” I wearily replied that most of the calls must be in support of the bill, right? “Oh, no,” she said. “Against i…

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