Religion Dispatches
…an-American. But as anyone familiar with Southern politics can tell you, a city of Southern Democrats is not necessarily a city of social liberals. And, in light of perceptions about a lack of African-American support for gay rights, that should be especially true of support for gay rights in Chattanooga. I grew up in Chattanooga, leaving for college in 2008. As a kid, I didn’t know a single adult who was out—although I certainly knew plenty of p…
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…k the city of Atlanta does that? Page: Atlanta used to bill itself as the “City too busy to hate.” Lefever: Maybe it should be the “City too busy to remember.” We can see this physically, where we tear down building after building here. In terms of Civil Rights history, unfortunately, people know Dr. King—and that’s what they remember. What we tried to do in the book was to make this more than a King movement. Michael, since you are an Atlanta nat…
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…Physicsworld.com user asks, “What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?” Where infinity merges with the earth When you dig into pi, you encounter questions that are as much theological as mathematical: is there a pattern to the universe? Or is it fundamentally random? And how do we reckon with the infinite? Some people have always insisted that there must be a pattern behind pi. If only h…
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…ke it feel like it might, in fact, be true. “If Bloomberg wins in New York City, it is the triumph of corporate capitalism in New York City,” says Durkee. But, with his collar on, Reverend Billy describes the mayor more bluntly: “We’re going to cast out this devil, children!” “Fake” Healing Post-9/11 Both Talen and Durkee had alienating experiences with religion growing up. Durkee describes her father as a “fundamentalist Muslim,” though she was r…
Read More…olleague Hussein Rashid pointed out in this must-read piece), Mormons, the number two most disliked religion in America, have no business contributing to public rage against the number one most disliked religion in America. Nor in trafficking in falsehoods like “Islam is an ideology, not a religion,” a line I’ve been hearing from a few Mormons in recent days. Islam is in fact a religion for which Mormon leaders from the time of George A. Smith…
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…ictim he could denigrate. He united all the Germans against the Jews. It’s cheap politics, but we still have people who know how to do that. It doesn’t lead to anything but destruction. How can reeducating ourselves about the Bible—and educating the non-religious about the Bible—help us regain the center? One of my hopes for this book is that it will provide a textbook to talk about the Bible in a new way. A local pastor doesn’t have to actually s…
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…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
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…for Life President Jeanne Mancini told the Times: I don’t think that these numbers are the most important. The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion. But either they have the numbers or they don’t. And if they don’t, maybe the media should take a hard look at how it covers a predictable, lightly attended act of agitprop which claims to represent hundreds of thousands of people…
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…the stage for two long days. While there’s good reason to worry about the number of high-ranking military officers who used the ReAwaken rally to declare war on their political opponents—while attacking US elections and a free press—it was the voices of civilian preachers like Pastor Burns who delivered the most bellicose speeches of the event, unfailingly leaning into violent religious rhetoric. One by one, they warned that the time for battle i…
Read More…’t you give us a little bit of the background on your August speech to the City Council? What was the resolution, and how did you decide to take the approach you did? As you can imagine in a city such as Springfield (located in the heart of the Bible Belt with several religiously-affiliated schools and universities), any ordinance that seeks to affirm gays and lesbians and secure equal protections for their rights is going to come under all kinds…
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