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Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…

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Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

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James Dobson’s Family Values Were Influenced by a Eugenicist [Audio]

…giondispatches.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Audrey-Clare-Farley-RD-Clip-.ogg   Bradley Onishi: What’s so important about this story is that once again, we have a secular person or a non-evangelical person whose ideas are formative for what will become the bedrock of evangelical theology, politics, and practice. I mean, we see this with the rise of the religious right and someone like Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie; neither of them are evangel…

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How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…

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Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

…have my problems with this approach, of course, but quite frankly, these researchers are so busy because mainstream journalists aren’t doing their job. What I do wish, however, is that these researchers would do the work to establish the long historical trajectory of movements like dominionism and NAR in relation to the longer history of Pentecostal and charismatic movments. None of what is happening now is new, it’s merely recycled teachings from…

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Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…

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Finding Noah’s Flood: A Misconception of Biblical Proportions

…l, Ballard was the leader of a National Geographic expedition to the Black Sea expressly to test the idea.  A third misconception is that a Black Sea flood could ever be “worldwide.” The idea that it could is inextricably linked to “flood geology,” the fake-science backbone of creationism. Counterintuitively for a literalist movement, the makers of the infamous Creation Museum do not attempt to pinpoint the physical location of Noah’s Flood. For t…

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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…

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Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

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“Saints Are Only Human”: Leaving the Church, But Heeding this Pope’s Lessons

…slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were permitted. Despite 10,000 folding chairs, most of us would have no choice but to stand. Once in my appointed place behind the last row of seats, I found myself in a community of fellow pilgrims, lottery winners from local parishes, nearby colleges, an…

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