Religion Dispatches
…bage, whereupon the camera shows a tear rolling down his cheek. The public service announcements for the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign reframed how millions of American children came to understand that their personal actions affected the community as a whole. Thirty years later, we have gone through a similar learning experience with regard to separating our garbage out into various types. We learned that throwing all of our trash into one can…
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…rican history indicates how powerful such pseudo-theological narratives in service of the state can be). Thus we observe that later exegetes and jurists began to make frequent exceptions to the injunction against committing aggression contained in Qur’an 2:190 and preferred to understand the verse as mandating primarily non-combatant immunity without placing any restriction on the Muslim army’s ability to commence fighting. This progressive wateri…
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…y branches grow spectacularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The Centers for Disease Control are a part of the uniformed service; there is an enormous new bureaucracy called the “Department of Homeland Security” (wasn’t this what the Army and Navy were supposed to be for, under the Constitution?). And the state Militias which were the sole purpose for the Second Amendment to the Constitution are now called “National Guard.” None of these…
Read More…tate, excluding Indians not taxed”; and Section Three excluded from future service any member of the government who had previously sworn an oath of office to the State and then joined the Confederacy in open rebellion. Predictable stuff, really. After winning the War, Washington intended to re-draw the electoral map and to prohibit southern states from electing popular war heroes back to Congress. That’s slightly power-mongering, but certainly ben…
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…hat Phillips could not refuse to serve interracial couples (but could deny service to interreligious and same-sex couples) is one way for them to do so. As we have already seen, their proposition makes little sense in terms of strict scrutiny, and in fact the Colorado law at issue in Masterpiece Cakeshop likewise does not differentiate among the kinds of discrimination from which it seeks to protect citizens. Waggoner’s and Francisco’s claims only…
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…,” Gabriel Rutan-Ram said. “If an agency is getting tax money to provide a service, then everyone should be served—it shouldn’t matter whether you’re Jewish, Catholic or an atheist. We’re all citizens of Tennessee, regardless of our religion.” Defenders of the bill deny that it’s discrimination to deny anyone service who doesn’t conform to their doctrines. Bradley Williams, president of the formerly Methodist-affiliated, Holston United Methodist H…
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…Kirill would continue to be commemorated at St. Nicholas. Then, after the service, he told the clergy that their dispute with Kirill was of great concern to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The clergy of St. Nicholas refused to relent. It was at this point the threats began. A service was interrupted by a man who broke a window; an online smear campaign was launched against the parish; and the church was vandalized with the pro-Putin, pro…
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…t—evangelical practice itself is arguably one source of that cult. Evangelicals have always tended to invest the preacher and his words with central importance, an importance that has too often been wielded not just in the service of the Lord but also in the service of the preacher’s own power. And that, of course, is a risky set-up when it comes to sex—a sign that supposedly godly lives can turn into a living hell, right here, right now….
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…involved in discussion about whether a local church could be used for the service and whether local clergy ought to participate. There are differing perceptions about whether she instructed local pastors not to allow the ordination service to be held in local churches. It is hard to know all that went on behind the scenes. In any case, she encouraged her colleagues to “be extravagant in hospitality” to those who would be involved even if the deno…
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…ley, Speaker of the House Rayburn, and David Lynn, Capital Architect. That service was reported in the AP newswire as follows: Evangelist Billy Graham Reports “Hunger For God in Washington” (AP)~Evangelist Billy Graham told a crowd from the steps of the United States Capitol yesterday: “If I would run for President of the United States today, on a platform of calling the people back to God, back to Christ, back to the Bible, I’d be elected. ‘”Ther…
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