Religion Dispatches
…ised in were equally foreign to each other. When they sent us out into the world, I am not sure our elders knew exactly how flat the world had become. Much of this is due to the rapid advancement of the information age within my formative late-teenage years. We inadvertently took a bite from the tree of knowledge and we can’t turn back. We are now all grown up and own Mac laptops. We find Stephen Colbert mildly prophetic, read the Huffington Post,…
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…play upon their anxieties over a changing demographic landscape. In other words, Trump has turned the Jay-Z line, “I’m anti-Santa Maria. Only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace”—a posthumous toast to his one-time friend The Notorious B.I.G.—on its head through his Columbus Day proclamation in which he declared on behalf of his supporters that the ‘only Christopher they acknowledge is Columbus.’ Columbus’ elevation into the heroic pantheon with…
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…e until they feel great about it,” promised Matt Stone. It’s been ten years a Mormon and now a tithe is on the table, a down payment on a more just and equitable world. What the musical chooses to give away will say a lot about the world it wants to hold onto….
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…ing character in the film, gets to be the mouthpiece for its message: “The world may or may not be a world of purpose, but it does contain a little bit of magic.” I know it’s just a romantic comedy, but I couldn’t help being a little disappointed. I guess I just don’t see what purpose and magic have to do with one another. If Sophie could really contact an unseen world of souls of the dead, it would certainly make death less final. But how would i…
Read More…page posted a response: “If r/Christianity builds a hospital in the Third world, we are going to build 10! Let the X-mas Wars and the overall battle for goodness in the world begin!” On Dec. 9, a member of the atheist group set up a fundraising page for the group Doctors Without Borders on the charitable donation site FirstGiving.com. Crymes, after encouraging members of the Christian group to donate to the atheists’ campaign, created her own Fir…
Read More…he record—but he was able cast them as opponents of God and country on Fox News. After the Fox News segment aired, the rightwing media from Breitbart to LifeSiteNews exploded with coverage of this minor legislative moment and Hall’s comments. Meanwhile in Oklahoma, Governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill that has been labeled as (and opposed as) a bill that allows the Ten Commandments to be posted in public schools, and government buildings, b…
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…Nearly three-quarters of all white evangelical Protestants—72%—approve of Trump’s job performance. This isn’t surprising, as Trump has taken pains to bolster the America-first white nationalism that has supplanted any meaningful religious principles for the vast majority of white evangelicals, from race-baiting to Muslim-baiting, from resurrected controversies over Confederate monuments to faux controversies over kneeling football players. Just la…
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…breadwinner for the family. Almost immediately, this news created a media ruckus, particularly in the world of conservative punditry, where it was largely seen by a mostly male commentariat as a harbinger of doom for the American way of life. On Fox News, Lou Dobbs moderated a discussion about the dire consequences of this shift in family dynamics and gender relations. Commentator Juan Williams lamented that “something [is] going terribly wrong i…
Read More…from “anti-American” to “thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.” Beck’s words have consequences. They advance a world view that ultimately places Jews like Soros in the crosshairs, not unlike what we saw with Father Coughlin in the 1930s or the John Birch Society in the 1950s. Byron Williams, a Beck acolyte who recently engaged in a shoot-out with police on his way to kill “people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU,” shares his…
Read More…n of their harmony was a strong delusion. Karl Rove’s epic meltdown on Fox News’ election night when Fox called the election for President Obama showed the strength of the delusion. Rove hijacked Fox News pundits and their audience, claiming there was still a path for Romney to win in Ohio. Now, Rove and the RNC’s fates are linked with the hard-line religious ideologues whose power is on the wane. From Akin’s “legitimate” rape to Richard Mourdock…
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