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Why Faith Needs Redemptive Struggle to Be Meaningful

I have had the honor of working extensively with the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, beginning when he keynoted the launch of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice in November 2013. It has been a fruitful partnership in all respects. In his new book, Rev. Barber reminds us of the importance of education and history in the long struggle for justice and righteousness. Referring to how those in power kept the poor divided in histor…

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Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US?

…se, his funeral last October was the largest in the country’s history, with 800,000 Israelis attending. In the past month, Rabbi Noam Perel, head of Bnei Akiva, the largest Jewish religious youth group in the world, called for the mass-murder of Palestinians and for their foreskins to be scalped and brought back as trophies, alluding to an episode in the Book of Samuel; and a Jerusalem city councillor, in charge of security, encouraged a crowd to…

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Lifestyles of the Rich and Pious

CNN’s Belief Blog has a great rundown of the lavish homes of American archbishops who haven’t gotten the memo from Pope Francis about a “church which is poor and for the poor.” CNN reports that “10 of the 34 active archbishops in the United States live in buildings worth more than $1 million.” The median home value in the U.S. is $174,200. Not surprisingly, that list includes some of the nation’s most outspoken conservative bishops—and allies of…

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Republican Scandals Drag Secretive ‘Family’ Into the Big Time

…o-gooders—we should respond with—more noblesse oblige? A government of the best and the brightest, the myth of meritocracy, a carrot for strivers and the bludgeon or the dole, depending on which party is in power, for those who’ll never make the cut? Thin gruel. Randy writes: “faith functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. When you conflate religion with the state, as some members of The Family are prone to do,…

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Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

…pages I’ll confine myself to Religulous.) This is the kind of thing a fair number of my students, raised in the Protestant-dominated United States (even Catholics and Jews have assimilated this definition), come to university thinking about religion; the two key components of which are “belief” and “God.” Religion is some cryptic interior, individual thing that exists in one’s own head, and is only understood in relation to a God. I don’t blame my…

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Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

…ific terrorist attacks in Paris, Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia received a phone message stating, “I hope you people are happy about what you did in Paris. I’d like to state for the record that Allah is a piece of pork shit.” A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of December 7, the mosque manager unlocked the front doors for the early morning fajr prayer. As he was about to enter, he noticed the severed head of a pig lying next to the door…

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Where’s Wallnau? A NAR Apostle Takes Aim at Swing Counties in ‘The Battle for the Mountain of Government’

…gence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.” The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for…

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God Dissolves into the Occupy Movement

…, and the time that clocks tell and that history records. These occupation sites are vortexes of reinvention, where you have to run on instinct because, when there, you realize that all the features of ordinary religion—and, yes, I said “trappings” earlier in part because it includes the word “trap”—just stink of the demonic possession that infects the whole society outside. At least that’s how it can seem in the kairos phase of revolution. What a…

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Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors On The March; More in Global LGBT Recap

…e world’s Catholics were in Europe, but by the middle of this century that number will fall “to perhaps a sixth.” Geography is not destiny, but it is only natural that prelates from one part of the world will tend to speak for the traditions with which they are most familiar, which might well differ considerably from other regions. We saw early signs of this when the family synod was held in Rome in 2015, when the Church’s (mainly European) libera…

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‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

…ch Haitians make sense of this tragedy, and I suspect we will find growing numbers of Pentecostal converts as Haitians attempt to find meaning in what can only be described as senseless and inexplicable suffering.   Sarah Posner | Judging Pat Robertson’s Influence Evangelical pastors, writers, and activists have stepped up to condemn Pat Robertson’s remarks about Haiti, saying that he does not represent them, nor do comments represent Christianity…

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