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The Plot to Turn the Synod into a “Plot”

…nt of the total number of the members mentioned in articles V and VIII. Despite this, Douthat assures us that “as a Catholic,” he expects “the plot to ultimately fail; where the pope and the historic faith seem to be in tension, my bet is on the faith.” It’s a measure of how deeply conservative Catholics identify the “faith” with the doctrinal orthodoxy of JP II and Benedict that Douthat actually believes he speaks for Catholics more authentically…

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Vatican Council on Women Would Be Funny Were it Not So Insulting

…olic terms, are not. Imagine a similar discussion of the masculine body. I bet the mere suggestion of penis enlargements as a moral issue for men would stop more conversations than it would start. Try a simple substitute of ‘masculine’ for ‘feminine’ in this section of the document: Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the masculine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘sea…

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Before Oprah, There Was the “Hour of Power”: Crystal Cathedral Pastor Robert H. Schuller Has Died

…ng financial problems and infighting among church staff — including a rift between Schuller and his son (and heir apparent) the Rev. Robert Schuller, Jr., over the direction of church ministry — the Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy, eventually reaching a $57.5 million agreement with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange to purchase the gleaming architectural icon of American Protestantism. Exterior of the Crystal Cathedral, 2007. Image via Wi…

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The Man in the Red Dress: My Unlikely Friendship with Cardinal Francis George

…u say, ‘Well, that’s not so!’ You try to be polite, but people should know better,” he told me once as we discussed what he called “wrong ideas about God.” “Christ is not an idea. Christ is a person. But ideas about him are very important. If you have a wrong idea, that stops your growth in God,” he said. “People within the church should know better and just are ignorant of the facts, no matter what you think about them. That puzzles me.” We had o…

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What the Conservative Christian “Fake-Trans Bathroom Creeper” Has To Do With Suburban Anxiety

…That boundary is harder to find in most American cities, where the divide between “Anytown” and “the greater Anytown area” might not be a line at all, but a more gradual widening of lot sizes, along with some demographic shifts. A lot of people who aren’t residents of a city proper might have to do business in the city limits daily, both relying on and contributing to the city’s economic strength. Which brings us to Springfield, Missouri. And Fay…

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How Would Religion Respond to Extraterrestrials? A Thought Experiment

…changes such radical discoveries might manifest in religion? I’m going to bet that religion is not going to disappear. If anything, the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence might look a bit like the sixteenth century, when Europeans first began to grapple with the fact that the western hemisphere contained two massive continents with millions of inhabitants. But, as to specifics: how could Christians maintain the special election of humanit…

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The Return of Government as “Idolatry” and the “Second Amendment Remedies”

…, New Hampshire, and Iowa) promoting a creationist film called The Genesis Code, and holding fundraising receptions. The moralistic film follows an unbelieving hockey player and a Christian journalism student who struggle with “reconciling their scientific studies and what’s taught in the Bible” as he falls for her and she uses their relationship to “guide” him “toward God.” You can read a “pro-family” review here that warns of sex (kissing) and n…

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‘Politicized Religion’ Doesn’t Explain Evangelical Support of Donald Trump

…s (e.g., Talal Asad, José Casanova, Charles Taylor, Saba Mahmood, and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd) have argued, the delimitation of the social spheres of religion and politics, and the boundary between them, is socially-constituted, variable, and constantly contested. This does not mean that “there is no such thing” as religion or politics, or that one term can simply be collapsed into the other; it means that what counts as religion and politics will…

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Declaring a Theological State of Emergency: Trump’s Ignorance Must Not Be Ours

…e of the Muslim faith mirrors that of many Americans. “Islam” has become a code word for terrorism. In fact, it is the name of a monotheistic faith tradition based on the Qur’an which is practiced by more than 1.6 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world. Its practitioners are referred to as Muslims. So our popular pedagogy must begin in order to right the wrongs of misinformation and demagoguery. Just as Christianity and Judaism have many ex…

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Fascinating History of Search for “Lost White Tribe” Sheds Light on Construction of Race

…diverse. Maybe these explorers did see people whom a modern American would code as white. Maybe not. As Robinson demonstrates in The Lost White Tribe, the better questions here have to do with the interpretation of bodies, not just with the bodies themselves. Basically: why were European and American adventurers so eager to find these far-flung white tribes in the first place? And they were eager. Reports of white Indians and white Africans made h…

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