Religion Dispatches
…, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bible Answer Man” Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute, tuning in like clockwork to his show weekdays 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Washington DC’s WAVA 105.1. Still, as much as I appreciated (and occasionally even found inspiring) these programs’ message of sel…
Read More…s would be arrested and prosecuted. Lokodo said the parade was designed to promote homosexuality to young people. “We are aware that there are inducements, including money, being offered to young people to promote the practice,” he said. Lawyer Nicholas Opiyo said he believed the minister was unaware that parade organizers had formally notified police of their intention to hold a public gathering. “In terms of the legal procedure, they ticked all…
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…eld said that “Gen. Boykin gave many in the field just the kind of warrior code they needed to fulfill their duties with moral passion.” In an extensive, and highly-documented, review of Mansfield’s Ten Tortured Words, Rodda, pointed out that the book was shot full of a series of historical errors and noted that “Mansfield makes David Barton, whose masterpiece of historical revisionism, Original Intent, is listed in the bibliography of Ten Torture…
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…n of the hermaphrodite in Fellini’s Satyricon. To be sure, Bowie’s a freak—code for “fag” among the real-life Jeff Spicolis in my junior high class, righteous dudes whose idea of total radness is firing up a beer bong, dropping the needle on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and watching The Wizard of Oz with the sound turned off. But he’s so heart-stoppingly beautiful, in such a confusingly feminine way, that he short-circuits my teenage brain,…
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…rends continue, perhaps we can look forward to the day when the word “values” is no longer used in political campaigns as a code word for bigotry….
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…istian members of the Texas Board of Education inserted intelligent design code words into its science education requirements. The wording includes directing students to analyze and evaluate “sudden appearance” in the fossil record and analyze the “complexity of the cell.” The language prompted creationist and pro-intelligent design organizations like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute to claim victory “for science education,” but science educa…
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…details, and it is always difficult for an outside observer to detect the coded messages of an in-group. (Think of the McCain campaign’s disturbing “The One” attack ad, which basically called Obama the Antichrist—but on a frequency that only evangelicals reared on apocalyptic conspiracy theories could pick up.) Chellew-Hodge quotes the following catechism from an evangelical organization: 1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, au…
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…re are contradictions everywhere. He leaves us with no plan for action, no code of behavior for the modern world, and no school of thought to belong to. These things we have come to expect from our moral theories, and “faith-based” politicians depend on them. There is no proof for the existence of God or that this Jesus really walked on the earth with which to combat the nonbelievers—I may be one myself, but I won’t let it keep me from reading Str…
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…t his clothing and mystery beverage were in violation of Liberty’s student code of conduct (as some students were quick to note)? Or was this just the final straw in an already-collapsing heap of negative attention? As a scholar of religion and American culture, I would argue that these aren’t the most helpful sorts of questions to ask. Rather, if we want to understand what’s going on here, then we need to think of this photo as a moment exposing…
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…d probably hacked by Russia—revealed phrases like “cheese pizza” and other code words for child sex-trafficking. Hillary Clinton herself may have been involved. The ring seemed to include Satanic rituals. The Clinton campaign was engaged, on the side, with running a child sex-trafficking business. As German Lopez noted at Vox.com, the story seems to have begun on 4chan and spread through news aggregation websites and social media. The restaurant q…
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