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Rejecting Blood Sacrifice Theology, Again

By Peter Laarman

…as is Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in suburban Grand Rapids. Both are fortyish, hipsterish white guys with well-functioning brains and impressive resumes. Both make a real point of letting you know just how smart and how hip they are. Probably necessary in order to build an audience, but also cloying. Just as Jones is now trying to make a splash with A Better Atonement, so Bell made some waves a year ago by proclaiming…

A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…e end of each month. This was not small town America in the ’50s, this was Miami in the ’80s. Today I shop at drugstore.com. I shop anonymously. We, Consumers We should never forget that to consume is to devour. Whether it is the excess of our ritualized Thanksgiving meals or the “click, click, click” of the computer mouse in response to “free shipping!” “40 % off!” or “Buy one get one free!” in the United States, we are gluttonous consumers of ma…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…s not a huge success either. The opening weekend saw sales of more than $6 million in tickets. That’s the kind of number that will inspire others to try and figure out the formula for the faith-and-family blockbuster. Yet, with the cost of the film reportedly exceeding $30 million, it’s an open question whether or not the Left Behind reboot will get a second installment. The marketing problem of evangelical movies is still, stubbornly, a problem….

The Faith that Faith Produced

By Haroon Moghul

…om ideologies and identities to the fatal exhaustion and inadequacy of the mind to determine things on its own. A spiritual revolution, often beginning in pain, the desolate pain of separation, failure, and defeat. That is my journey, too—one that’s taken me many years to even realize I was on, and for all its ecstasies and disappointments, it is a journey to faith that began with the loss of it. [We are grateful to the author, editors, and publis…

Corporations Have Consciences and Contraceptives Are Cheap: Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court

By Sarah Posner

…ccinations or blood transfusions — the question of the impact on employees might have been treated differently. That was evident, too, in Scalia’s flip dismissal of the costs of the contraceptive methods that Hobby Lobby objects to. Unlike Catholic plaintiffs, Hobby Lobby seeks an exemption from covering ella, Plan B, and IUDs, claiming that they may cause an abortion. Scalia declared these methods “not terribly expensive.” But Verilla pointed ou…

Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse

By Kathleen Holscher

…rnacular context for clerical sexual abuse in New Mexico. I don’t write to minimize the historical and contemporary gravity of sexual abuse across Pennsylvania, in Boston, or anywhere else. Others have written thoughtfully about the different, local contexts that shaped those better-known crises. There are many good approaches to grappling with the history of sexually violent priests; the problem is enormous and there’s room for it all. But in New…

Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

By Andrew Aghapour

…he problem, he seemed to be saying, is with blaming in the first place. Blaming an airline is disorienting because it applies a human-oriented inference system to an entity that simply doesn’t act like a person. So if we find ourselves blaming institutions, I asked him, are we already using a set of flawed psychological mechanisms? “It’s not that we’re using flawed psychological mechanisms,” he responded. “We’re using the only psychological mechan…

Crisis in Philly: Trial Date Nears for Priests Indicted in Sex Abuse Scandal

By Anthea Butler

…ed files in relation to the personnel files of the 37 priests named in the grand jury indictment. It was on her recommendation that the 21 priests were placed on administrative leave. In addition to the four cases, four civil suits have been filed so far against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s case may be harrowing, but I suspect it is not unique. It is very clear that the first round of trials did not clean up every diocese. The w…

The Contested Religious Powers of Baseball on Display in Cuba

By Sean O'Neil

…merican foreign policy is not a new one. In 1913, James Sullivan, dispatch minister for the Dominican Republic, suggested to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that baseball could exorcise political demons in that Latin American nation, while also diffusing anti-U.S. sentiment. The manifestation of resentment toward Americans, this is merely on the surface, I believe, and will disappear if the American Government makes any attempt to win th…

Mormon Women Knock at the Door, Are Turned Away

By Holly Welker

…d to the Tabernacle on Temple Square to wait in the stand-by line for last-minute tickets. Instead they were met by church spokesperson Ruth Todd, who said, “This is no surprise to you, that we won’t be able to offer you a ticket or a place.” Then, as men and boys strode past them into the Tabernacle where they awaited the opportunity to move to the Conference Center where the session would take place, members of Ordain Women lined up individuall…