RDBook: A City Too Busy To Hate
…hy and geospatial information systems for the Department of Environmental Studies. Photo: Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia by flickr user jasonrowland. Used under a Creative Commons license….
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Gen X, Gadgets, and God
…would provide “Biblical guidance to your everyday ups and downs.” With it, users select from a scrolling list of “blessings” (friendship, new home) or “burdens” (anger, money), shake the phone, and get a Bible verse to guide reflection in the course of daily life. What is cool about apps like the Holy Roller is not, however, just what they contain and how that has been selected, but where they go and what comes back. That is, a user of the Holy Ro…
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Waterboarding in the Living Room
…sed, then, that in comments responding to the The Smoking Gun article, one user called “rahimali” wrote, “I’m ok with a little waterboarding now and again if it shuts the wife’s cakehole. Maybe waterboarding would cure PMS?” Although the torture captured on film at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was presented as aberrant (the behavior of “a few bad apples”), released memos have shown again and again that torture and so-called enhanced interrogatio…
Read MoreHajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque
…alright, but like the toilet, I don’t know what made it impossible for the user to at least keep the seat dry!? Maybe this was the result of the overall cleaning method, because it was also clear that the rooms were serviced, and I even saw one of the cleaning ladies. Anyway, I chose the one with the least amount of water on the seat and counted on the heat to dry the rest, as it did in no time at all. Still, it was pretty minimal damage and if no…
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Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins
…ged like a pinball machine’s top-ten list. The service requires that every user play both Sinner and Saint, and a novice is granted five bits of each one’s currency: Five Horns for confessing, and five Halos for granting penances. One of each is “gifted… every Sabbath day” but for zealots and louts more credits can be purchased for 17¢ apiece. As with fancy chemical aids for our Facebook farms, this money goes straight to the developers. The users…
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Religious Conspiracy Theories About Giffords Shooting Emerge
…l prophecy. Gallups’ videos appear on the channel of the anonymous YouTube user ppsimmons, and his theories are being promoted by Special Guests, a service that books conservative guests on talk radio, which is also plugging Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, in connection with Gallups’ videos. As I wrote yesterday, Pratt told me last summer he is a “Biblical Christian” and insists that state militias need to be “given new l…
Read MoreThe Google Question of Evil
…But, with all due respect to Ecclesiastes, digital technology is something new under the sun. Laws about stealing, and lying, and loving one’s neighbor aren’t so easy to apply to issues of global connectedness and digital privacy. Back in June, writing about the NSA surveillance scandal, Daniel Schultz pointed out in Christian Century that: there has been minimal reaction by religious groups. A quick survey of eight denominations found that only o…
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Paranoia and the Progressive Press: A Response to WaPo’s Religion Columnist
…de the military.) The language has been used by Pentecostal leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a group that sees itself creating a new church and an army of spiritual warriors who will hasten the return of Christ by taking dominion over the earth. But the Seven Mountains framework has also become a sort of lingua franca among the religious right, forming the basis for Janet Porter’s May Day rally on the mall last year as well as the Nationa…
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A Journalist in Church, Hiding in Plain Sight
…ness—common refrains offered up with few palliatives. Back then, God as I knew Him was remote and mediated by the Church—a somber relative of this pastor’s appealingly user-friendly and solution-oriented God. As for the Catholic Mass’s plodding readings and Communion queues, they were an occasion for daydreaming and sinful thoughts—thoughts I agonized in vain to squelch. Which is why I decided, at the age of 16, that I no longer believed unreserve…
Read MoreA Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit
Last week, the aptly-titled Reddit user “european_douchebag” posted a candid photo on the online community site. The image, of a young Sikh woman playing with her phone while waiting in line, included the caption “i’m not sure what to conclude from this.” No, “european_douchebag” wasn’t questioning which game the woman was playing on her phone, he was referencing the abundance of facial hair on the young woman’s face—a nod towards her Sikh belief…
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