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What in the Name of the Crusades are Tennessee Evangelicals Doing in Kurdish Iraq?

…village of Halabja. Some 14,000 refugees from Kurdistan made their way to Nashville, Tennessee, now home to the largest Kurdish population in the nation. Four years later, a group of Nashville evangelical Dominionists known as Servant Group International, departed from the Belmont Church—a megachurch occupying several blocks on Music Square—making their way to the mountains of northern Iraq where they set up shop. Why is Kurdistan important to Ch…

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Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

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Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…

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Less for Moore? If Russell Moore Left the SBC Due to Conscience and Convictions His Next Move Is a Curious One

…Moore’s acceptance of a pastor-in-residence position at Immanuel Church in Nashville, given its leadership’s chumminess with Mahaney, has caught the eye of evangelical and exvangelical abuse survivor advocates, who are calling the move out as hypocritical. One of those advocates is Emily Joy Allison, a poet who launched the #ChurchToo hashtag and more recently published the book #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing….

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Is the Bible Too Holy to Be Tennessee’s State Book?

…hers. Hotel nightstands around the U.S. are filled with Bibles produced by Nashville-based Gideons International. Major publisher B&H Publishing is also based there, and even though Thomas Nelson is a subsidiary of New York-based Harper Collins, its offices are in Nashville. It’s hardly unusual for declarations of state symbols to recognize locally significant industries. Earlier this month, Maine adopted its edible export the lobster as the offic…

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A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

…We have an unprecedented access to cheap goods, yet we must recognize that cheap goods are cheaply made. I am not speaking of quality, I am speaking of cheap labor. We must recognize that through the act of shopping, whether it is for an article of clothing, a toy, a pint of strawberries, or even our morning cup of coffee, we participate in a global economy that values profit over people. Disposable goods are made by disposable people, faceless in…

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Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

…e 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 general…

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Newt Gingrich Visits the “Holy Ghost Bartender”

…rts, where the pair was consumed with holy laughter: A 1999 profile in the Tampa Tribune described Browne and the phenomonen that is also known as the Toronto Blessing, because of a revival sparked there: Howard-Browne is the pastor of The River at Tampa Bay, a high-energy, racially-mixed church in Temple Terrace he founded in December 1996. Nearly 1,000 people spend about four hours in a service led by “the Holy Ghost bartender,” as he is known….

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Finding Nonreligious Happiness at the RNC

…headquartered in nearby Clearwater. The drive from my hotel into downtown Tampa every day brings me by a Scientology billboard, the first I can remember seeing. And tonight, after I left a Rick Santorum rally and was heading into the secured perimeter around the convention center, someone handed me a booklet called The Way to Happiness: A Common Sense Guide to Better Living. The rules in chapter one are indeed common sense: Get care when you are…

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The Faith that Faith Produced

…ou’ll read an excerpt below—has surprised me, too.  I wish I could find my airline companion and give him this book, to surprise him, too—in a good way. (I would accept Lakers tickets in lieu of apologies, but I think that particular era is done.) This whole book is a result of a profound evolution, and needs to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us ou…

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