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Gas For Two Bucks a Gallon? Bachmann Taps a Pipeline to the American Sacred

By Rosamond C. Rodman

…iver between Kentucky and Indiana, causing indefinite closure of a major east-west interstate and river crossing, it wasn’t long before it came to be known as “Shermageddon.” These references reflect something larger, truer, more apt than the events they were coined to describe—in Eliadian terms, they were profane events positioned within a sacred reality, namely the invocation of a biblical reference to Har Megiddo or Mount Megiddo (in the Hebrew…

Richard Dawkins’ Atheist Academy of Unguided Truth

By Paul Wallace

…t I began to see that all true education is intensely personal. Dawkins’ distaste for an officially atheist academy may be mere iconoclasm. But maybe not. Maybe it’s closer to the truth to say he could never allow the kind of intellectual openness found routinely in parochial schools around the world. Imagine it! Who are you? Do you disbelieve in God? Why? Do you disbelieve in God because your mother disbelieves in God? Do you believe there’s no…

The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e will leave when a tragedy comes. Fundamentalist churches don’t tend to last past the charismatic pastor that got them started. Christianity is not supposed to make you secure. Christianity is supposed to give you the courage to walk into an insecure world knowing that you’re not alone and to embrace the radical insecurity. If you’ve got to spend your time proving that you’re better than someone else—males are better than females, whites are bett…

How To Control Your Ungodly Urges… On a Budget!

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…you most need to hear: “I deserve better than to be a meanspirited bullying harasser!” 10. Avoid tempting situations. If you’re listening to Rush Limbaugh? Stop. …

A Truly Fearless Human Being: Rev. Howard Moody, 1921-2012

By Tom Davis

…friend of RD, Tom Davis. What I found is a life that defies both our coarsest stereotypes of the priggish preacherman and the conventional wisdom among today’s self-styled progressive religious leaders that finding “common ground” with uncompromising opponents is the best path to change. In addition to Moody’s work detailed above—most notable perhaps for the way in which he showed great leadership by following and learning from women, and not by l…

Watching Preachers’ Daughters Right After the Boston Bombings While Teaching a Class on Augustine’s Confessions

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…n go on to behave in appalling and harmful ways—like when, in Book II, Augustine steals some pears. Some readers accuse Augustine of overreacting here, making a youthful indiscretion into a grand and lurid sin. But Augustine’s point is exactly that it wasn’t grand or interesting. It was small and stupid. He didn’t need the pears. They weren’t even good. He wasn’t hungry. He didn’t have anything against the owner of the orchard, and he stole the pe…

Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…halves of humanity coming together” within his heterosexual marriage is most striking to me, though. Complementarity is something that the religious right appeals to when they can no longer defend procreation as the reason for excluding gays and lesbians from marriage. Complementarity posits that men go with women because “Tab A” is mean for “Slot B.” You can’t have two Tabs and two Slots together since there is no “natural” fit. Duke University…

Why The Advocate‘s Choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year is a Mistake

By Anthea Butler

…c and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” What Pope Francis is doing is walking a tightrope. Instead of pushing dogma, he’s pushing a change in tone, not in substance. Because he is carefully eliding the church’s teaching and focusing on compassion, many liberals and media pundits—including Th…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…y Spirit. He remembers Pentecost, when, in the Christian Scripture, the first apostles received the guidance of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. William, however, didn’t make it to Jerusalem or to a university. After he crossed from Egypt into Israel, border guards took him to immigration prison. Months later, he was handed over to an Israeli employment agency to be a source of cheap labor in Eilat—the bottom tip of the country, where the Negev meets…

70th National Prayer Breakfast Made ‘Cosmetic’ Changes, But Biden Delivered the Same Old Tone-Deaf ‘Unity’ Message

By Chrissy Stroop

…n response to the many scandals associated with the National Prayer Breakfast—most notably the exploitation of the event by convicted Russian spy Maria Butina. The fallout from these scandals led the organizers to make some changes in how the event is run starting this year. Most substantively, the NPB itself is now run by a legally distinct entity from the Family, and only the president, senators, and members of Congress are invited, with their r…