Search for "breaking newstoday cleantalkorg2.ru bbc news Read Breaking News Today news today Politics Stock Market breaking newstoday"

So You Think You Can Dance, Or At Least Lead A Populist Moral Movement

By Daniel Schultz

…native systems to care for the poor and give them a voice, because those structures simply didn’t exist. Today, we live in a much more complex economic system than the agrarian subsistence farming of Jesus’ world, and we’re much more involved in government social supports, or the lack thereof. And guess who controls the government? Right: the Republicans and the Democrats. If you want to make a real difference in the lives of the poor, you have to…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…h Democrats and Republicans on board. To some extent—this is not entirely true—faith and politics correlate in some communities. So you’ve got to be very careful of that if you want to reach into these communities. You’ve got to depoliticize it. Our research also shows that you’ve got to reframe climate change in terms of not just care for the environment but also for people. Religious communities put people on a higher pedestal than they do anima…

Bruni on Bachmann

By Sarah Posner

…a superior piety to other religious Americans? I’m not sure who that “we” Bruni has his ear cocked to is. Bruni highlights the Nuns on the Bus movement and the fact that some religious denominations perform same-sex marriages to demonstrate that seriously religious people have political (and religious) views that run counter to those of the religious right. I actually think these movements have received a great deal of positive coverage of late; o…

Free Arabs: Satire, Disobedience, and Disclaimers

By Nabil Echchaibi

…over his writings on police torture, secret services, the King’s salary, drug cartels, and hot-button issues on religion and Islamist parties. He has been frequently prosecuted and fined—and the newsrooms of his two publications have been closed down. Free Arabs is, thus, the latest iteration of a long project designed to amplify the voices of a new generation of Arab thinkers, activists, journalists, and artists who dare, against all odds, to fl…

Women Are Leaving Church, And the Reason Seems Clear

By Patricia Miller

…ercent), and overall 60 percent of Catholics say church should keep out of politics. Women’s church attendance did recover somewhat in the early 1990s, but then began a long slide in the mid-1990s that continued to 2012, when the GSS data end. While the GSS numbers don’t break out attendance by religion, church attendance for both men and women appears to have bottomed out around the time the sex scandals broke in the Catholic Church in 2001. Othe…

In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

By Ivan Strenski

…fear that Yoga’s non-Christian religious character lies hidden within it, ready to ensnare unsuspecting faithful. That yoga instructors often stage classes with joss stick incense burning, mutterings of bad Sanskrit, all done reverentially with hands folded in anjali mudra give fearful Christians all the evidence they need to press their case. And, in case to case, this congeries of practices may speak of a yoga that is, in fact, more than an aid…

Rick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation

By Sarah Posner

…nd Jessie Penn Lewis, who wrote extensively on spiritual warfare, and were read avidly by some early Pentecostals. Their books, still in print today, focused on demonic possession, deliverance, and powerful spiritual encounters. In the 1940s the movement that would give these beliefs further impetus was the Latter Rain Movement, which arose out of revivals in Canada. Focusing on extraordinary outpourings of the Holy Spirit, with spectacular spirit…

Gay Rights a Go in Chattanooga

By Michael Schulson

…rt because it’s 35% African-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 c…

How Conservative Christian Women Came to Claim “True” Feminism

By Eric C. Miller

…te and co-opt other important symbols, to suggest that they represent the true family, the true America – even the true feminism. CWA’s ability to deploy strong, emotional symbols in such a way that they can transform themselves into whatever image is powerful at the moment is, in my mind, the group’s greatest distinction. In particular, though, its claim to the term “feminism” was one of the more surprising elements of my research, and it really…

“Not a Christian Book”: The Perils of the Amazon Book Review

By Charlotte Gordon

…real problem is the clash between interfaith and what I call single faith politics. My position is that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity represent different pathways to the divine and that all three faiths embody important traditions and beliefs about God, worship, and how we should lead our lives. Those who espouse single faith politics hold that only one religious tradition is valid, and that the others are incorrect, and sometimes, even, evil….