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How Herbalife’s Gospel of Health and Wealth Fuels a Billion-Dollar Deception

…world of prosperity gospel preachers, whose claims about the relationship between faith, donations to the church, and personal well-being strike many outsiders as a straightforward, money-motivated swindle. In the business of hope, there’s already very little overlap between the legal and the ethical—and, it seems, little clarity on where the legal marketing ends and the illegal stuff begins. What’s clear is that dreams are good business. It’s fi…

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Turn On The News: The Times Has to Make a Choice: It Can’t Laugh at Satanic Claims and Take the Christian Right at Face Value

…ry takes place in a context closer to home. Putting that failure in a funhouse mirror simply allows us to clearly see inconsistencies that otherwise seem normal. If a European arts and culture story can treat conservative opposition to an artist as transparent and unpopular nonsense, why shouldn’t an American-focused piece do likewise? Instead, we’re forced to listen to supposed Christian mouthpieces, who represent not much more than their fax mac…

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As a Religious Studies Professor I Disagreed With the Hamline Firing — But Now I’ve Changed My Mind

…ditions are diverse. No, higher education cannot flourish without academic freedom. Yes, professors are only human and don’t deserve to be fired over a single disagreement or unintentional offense. But was this particular offense actually unintentional? Ultimately the direct cause of the controversy is that the instructor knew she was going to offend the Muslim students entrusted to her, and she did it anyway. That’s a pretty good example of punch…

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A desolate road in Israel lined with security fencing.

Decadence, Sickness, and Death: Mourning and the Israel-Hamas War

…incere belief that coexistence was possible. Peace Now, founded in 1978 to promote a genuine and just peace between Israel and Palestine, was a real, forceful movement in the 1980s, with some political power. No more. In fact, it is today’s protest movement, a mostly centrist movement, which has taught us that Israel has transformed into a more ethnocentric, illiberal, even autocratic, right-wing society. Many are against this, but the mere fact t…

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US Offers Help For Investigation of Bangladesh Killings

…the United States, which they want to impose “the new Moral Agenda” which promotes abortion, marriage between lesbians, gays and transsexuals. The president and director of the Christian Action Group spoke on a panel addressing “The new global agenda and its implications in the Dominican Republic.” They warned that international institutions like the Organization for American States and United Nations are pushing an agenda that would “destroy the…

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Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Spouts Christian Nationalism Defending Racist Voter Suppression

…g, and essentially shut down “Souls to the Polls” initiatives historically used by Black churches to get out the vote. Hyde-Smith, the latest in a long and shameful line of senators from Mississippi—including mediocrities such as Theodore Bilbo and James Vardaman—rose to defend the measure that seeks to make it harder for people to vote if they don’t look like her. And she turned to a Christian Nationalist motto and the Bible to justify her defens…

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Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” Has Replaced it)

…family at the center of their political agenda. This agenda—defending and promoting family values—resonated with evangelical Christians because it spoke to two of their central convictions. First, evangelicals believed that gender was part of the created order, that men and women were created by God to fulfill different roles. In traditional families, men provided and protected, while women bore, reared and nurtured children. Movements that viewe…

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Nancy Hardesty, Founding Mother of Biblical Feminist Movement (1941-2011)

…focus of the sermon (Mother’s Day is the worst, and if you are laughing I bet you know Nancy’s work). But submission theology also permeates every part of Christian life in our young woman’s world. Her interest in things intellectual is looked upon with suspicion or derision. Her leadership qualities are squeezed into “appropriate” but ill-fitting tasks like working with the children. It seems that no part of who she knows herself to be is welcom…

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Will SCOTUS Call the “Bluff” of Religious Liberty Activists?

…going to allow religious objectors to completely opt-out of laws by continually re-defining the burden on their religious exercise, regardless of the impact on third parties and the harms done to them. And you can bet if that strategy succeeds here, we’ll see it in use very soon in other contexts, like exemptions to LGBT non-discrimination laws and marriage equality protections. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that….

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How Would Religion Respond to Extraterrestrials? A Thought Experiment

…espair the priest cries out: “God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?” Whether this story is an atheist parable, or a meditation on the vulnerability of faith, it brings the question of religion’s encounter with extraterrestrials into sharp focus. Like those religious thinkers who have addressed the possibility of alien inte…

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