Religion Dispatches
…editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of porn.”) I don’t buy it. Anyone who understands the traction of evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment knows that most evangelical voters will never vote for Mitt Romney, especially if they have a choice in someone like Mike Huckabee. Marriott dropping porn won’t begin to make a dent in Romney’s (or even Huntsman’s) evangelical problem. And everybody should also know that—believe it or not—the…
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…, to a large extent, unmapped: the terra incognita in our skulls. Over the phone, Eagleman spoke with The Cubit about traumatic brain injuries, the idea of possibilianism, and the language we use to describe our brains. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. In The Brain, you do a good job of depicting the fragility of our experience of reality. Am I right to be a little scared by this instability? [Laughs] Well, you know, it’s one…
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…am one of the religious leaders in this country who has one of the largest numbers of black gay churches in the U.S. gathered together. I don’t know anybody that has a larger number of black gay churches meeting together. Not gay churches—the MCC definitely has the corner on that. Do you work together? Very closely. In fact I have an MCC credential, an ordination. Were there times in your life when you did question your ability to stay in the chu…
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…to give rising powers a stake in the global system—say, the G20. (Once you buy in, it’s a lot harder to cash out.) But the OIC? Quite often mocked, the OIC’s only competition in presumed irrelevance was long the Arab League, as jaded Arabs and Muslims struggled to determine whose global body was more completely pointless. By appointing an accomplished young lawyer as America’s envoy to the OIC, Obama is raising the organization’s profile. (Somebo…
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…ly 100 of the denomination’s 11,000 congregations have been lost. “I don’t buy it,” says Dykers-Koenig. “Maybe in a couple of presbyteries [it made a difference].” Rev. Teri Peterson, a pastor who helped organize the pro-10A response in north-central Illinois’ Blackhawk Presbytery, acknowledged that while a handful of pastors have left her presbytery, this year’s first-ever “yes” vote resulted from the swing of more than 36 votes. In an interview…
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…excerpt can adequately capture his complete work (I encourage everyone to buy his books) the following piece from Rainbow Pie better sums up his writing better than I ever could: Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote aga…
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…shooting. I spent a full hour, numb with terror, refreshing the news on my phone and waiting to be reassured that the violence had been contained. The (unarmed) door guards at the school’s drop-off line know my daughter’s tricks; how she likes to stall and take her sweet time. And I watch her dance away into the little building where she builds her dreams and plays with her friends every day. I can hold it together until I drive away, but then it…
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…And nobody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowe…
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…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…
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…ys Mark was the first Internet age megachurch celebrity pastor and leading number one podcasts, number one sermon downloads, those kinds of things. So what that did is, elevated Mark to the stratosphere so quickly, whereas you might think…typically they may take 20-30 years of faithful ministry, but the Internet just propelled things with such rapidity, and the Internet only sees how you speak, that’s all the Internet is, it’s all about verbal art…
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