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Kanye West’s Critique of Prosperity Preaching

…song. Two of these got plenty of play on major cable networks like MTV and BET; but very few people have seen the third video. In the song, Kanye seems to embrace personal spirituality (i.e., “the way I need Jesus”) over against an explicitly racial theology (i.e. “I ain’t here to argue about his facial features”), while insisting that Jesus walks with “the least of these”—namely, “strippers, murderers, drug dealers.” We might consider the song a…

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India’s Elections and the “Doniger Affair”

…ly Hindu, that women in Hinduism are subordinate to men, and that Hinduism promoted social inequality and injustice. In the absence of any theological perspectives, Marxist/Ambedkarist interpretations of Hinduism did have an impact on Western understandings, including those of noted religion scholars such as Doniger and Paul Courtright. This isn’t to say that Marxist approaches to religion can’t be useful, but it’s important to understand the cont…

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Will Hate Crime Laws Redeem Us All?

…threat of eternal damnation. Both liberals and conservatives need to do a better job at digging deeply into the scriptures to find ways to sow affection and dispel the discord we inevitably create with our textual wars over sexual orientation and gender identity. If either liberal or conservative interpretations continue to widen the rift between us, then neither side has gone deep enough in its understanding of scripture. Many on the religious r…

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Way Beyond Atheism: God Does Not (Not) Exist

…sequent revels. It turns out that he was not broke because no one took the bet. But the story points out a very interesting idea that Turner pursues in the course of his essay: The atheisms of most committed, principled atheists are often not more than mirror images—inversions—of the theisms they negate. In On Interpretation, Aristotle wrote, “Affirmations and their corresponding negations are one in the same knowledge”; therefore, one can discern…

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RDBook: Feminist Theologian Defies the Vatican Agenda

…k. This time, in late 2008, it is Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican. You bet it doesn’t. In just 142 pages, six chapters, with not a wasted word, Ruether lays out once again her critique of ecclesial patriarchy as life-denying and institution-killing. “When I open her books,” writes Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, in the foreword to the new book, “a force of mind and heart comes out that simply will no…

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The Death of a Secularist

…onse. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.”   Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totall…

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The Garden of Eden: A Dull Place? Paradise Lust Author Explains…

…this more dangerous than amusing. Sounds like we’re both walking the line between investing these quirky theologies with the humor that they seem to call for, and the sympathy and seriousness that endears them to us in the first place. So long as we upset everyone equally, we should be fine. Something has recently been irking me about the Eden narrative in the Bible that I want to run by you; Adam and Eve don’t actually seem all that upset about…

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Does Conservative Watchdog Actually “Get Religion”?

…doctrines and policies. But that doesn’t mean that he “gets religion” any better than the rest of us who report from the pews at the back of the worship hall, or from all of the unauthorized places—homes, schools, street corners, campuses, government—where religion wields major power. A few weeks ago, Mattingly criticized RD for running my story on a recently-installed, openly-gay Mormon congregational leader in San Francisco. Get Religion insist…

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‘Good Wife’ Alicia Florrick is an Atheist (and Drinks a Lot)

…peats that she is a straight up atheist, not agnostic, not wondering. Safe bet that this is the most often the word ‘atheist’ has been used in a single episode of a network drama. The wrinkle is that her daughter is part of a youth-y evangelical group, having converted a few seasons back. The writers use her for comic effect sometimes, as when the grownups are in crisis around the kitchen table and you suddenly hear a group of teenage girls beltin…

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Retribution v. Reform in American Justice

…f? I think this book can go a long way to inform people about the tensions between democracy and social control in American history. And it can teach people a lot about how evangelical Protestant traditions have changed over time, including the ways they have reshaped strategies to engage the political realm. I’m afraid there are no pleasurable parts of this book. In fact, it’s really grim. People with relatively good intentions did bad things. Bu…

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