Religion Dispatches
…s on TLC, Kody Brown is now being investigated by police in the Utah Valley town of Lehi for bigamy. Under Utah state law, bigamy—a third degree felony—is defined by cohabitation, not by legal marriage. And now comes the real test: did the Browns win enough audience support in just one hour of airtime to generate public resistance against the enforcement of Utah’s stringent anti-bigamy laws? Stay tuned….
Read More…rst there was that surreal CNN webcam video of Sarah Palin, offering up non-prognostications about her party’s upcoming convention and her own visions for 2016; then there was Nate Silver seeing no clear path to a Romney victory in Ohio. Could Rick Santorum really win Ohio? What would it mean? While waiting for election boards in urban centers to get their ballots counted, Twitter devolved to the important questions: can Romney eat Chicken Marsala…
Read More…eferences in several speakers’ remarks. But that is not enough for the word-counters at Fox News, who demand to know why the number of uses of “God” has dropped. In response, Sen. Dick Durbin took on the insinuation that the platform revision somehow proved that Democrats are anti-God: Well, I can just basically tell you that if the narrative that is being presented on your station and through your channel and your network is that Democrats are go…
Read More…r New energy – and stinging humor – has emboldened opponents of Virginia’s new ultrasound law, thanks to State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax)’s proposed amendment requiring men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test in order to get a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. She explained her probing, trenchant reasoning to the HuffPo: We need some gender equity here… The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a…
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…, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Cone remind us of is that the ultimate test of any community or identity is how it manages that border between what is known and what is outside. We live in a country that has a long history of sometimes doing that well and sometimes doing that in horrific ways. Glenn Beck plays on the edge of that border all the time. The thing about grace is that it removes the line altogether and gives us a completely differe…
Read More…tion training may effect positive changes in the multitasking practices of computer-based knowledge workers, and thus offers encouragement to those who would design workplace or technology interventions to take advantage of this possibility.” The authors’ language here is beginning to slip into business speak, with promises of increased workplace productivity through cognitive management. The thin line between self-improvement and self-training is…
Read More…e likely than Atheists to waver when prompted with death cues. Perhaps it’s the Agnostics we should be studying here, since believers and non-believers alike have, for Vail, tried-and-true psychological templates for dealing with death. Are there Agnostics in foxholes? What about Moralistic Therapeutic Deists?…
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…d on research I conducted for my masters thesis (subsequently published in book form), was in the process of writing a two-part essay to appear in SCP Journal, the first installment of which is titled “Burning Man: Preview To An Alternative Pagan Social Order.” The article is largely descriptive, rather than interpretive—the substantial part of Matthews’ critique will come in the second installment in the series, but can also be found in an articl…
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…ave me a copy of Moon’s autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen. I opened the book only because I felt obligated, but I quickly found myself engrossed by Moon’s story. Apart from the Korean particulars, it was a biblical-sounding account of poverty, conversion, persecution, imprisonment, miracles, and finally, rise to prominence. (His wife’s path was the “backwards and in high heels” version.) As someone whom faith has eluded, I couldn’t h…
Read More…pastors, and their parents. One young man who took his life recently was 19-year-old EricJames Borges whose “extremist Christian” parents tried to exorcise his gay demon and called him “disgusting and perverted” before kicking him out of the house. Borges had the best support around as a volunteer for The Trevor Project (the org that works to prevent LGBT suicide). He even did his own It Gets Better video. But I fear it was finally the religious c…
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