Religion Dispatches
…Christianity teaches us to value relationships over objects and embrace a communal vision of the human community over individualism. This is fundamental, for example, to the Catholic Social tradition, where the common good is foundational, as is the dignity of the human person. As a few more weeks of sales loom before us I sit and wonder, as I always do this time of year, how to find balance in my shopping. Where do I draw the line? The answer wi…
Read More…ember of Reddit’s Christian group from Fullerton, Calif., suggested to the community that it raise money for the Christian relief group World Vision. “If every member of r/Christianity donates just $4.45, we can build a health clinic in an impoverished area that desperately needs one,” she wrote. Within hours, a member of Reddit’s Atheism page posted a response: “If r/Christianity builds a hospital in the Third world, we are going to build 10! Let…
Read More…ther supporters of the Constitution in Louisiana have an uphill battle. Only three members of the House voted against the original law. State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, has announced that she will sponsor the repeal legislation. Kopplin’s web site repealcreationism.com provides more information about the campaign. So far, Louisiana is the only state to take the bait, but similar anti-evolution bills have been submitted in Tennes…
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…ing stories on The Huffington Post and on the New Yorker blog. A couple of comments kept coming up. Repeatedly, people kept asking, “Why would you go to Harding if you’re gay?” Even alumni, though, would ask why these GLBT students chose to attend there, or why they couldn’t or wouldn’t leave? The question is unfair. So many factors—funding, family, a deep connection to the religious culture—could place a student at Harding. While more and more st…
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…of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. I’m going to be in the company of a bunch of scientists on May 21, talking about communicating human evolution. (I’m so doomed.)…
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…that exemplifies the Japanese character. It’s difficult to view Ishihara’s comments as anything other than an ideological rant, and one that may come back to haunt him in the next election. And while it appears as if Japan, like America, has its share of vocal public figures eager to equate disaster with apocalypse and to use mass human suffering as an excuse to propagandize, Japanese religious groups have joined together—largely under the media r…
Read More…al of Muslims and Muslim-Americans getting involved in public policy. They compile that into a guilt-by-association Powerpoint and then shop it to reporters.” These individuals include, said Khan, Frank Gaffney, who issues baseless warnings to members of Congress about “creeping shari’ah;” Paul Sperry, co-author of the book Muslim Mafia, which claimed that the Council on American Islamic Relations had infiltrated Capitol Hill by placing interns as…
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…ght and continue to think of themselves, each other, and their nation. The common claim that hell has been on the outs in America since at least 1800 is simply untrue. If anything, 1800 represented a turning point in the other direction. The idea of universal salvation had appealed to both elites like Chauncy and common folk in the late-1700s. The promise that all humans would eventually be saved represented an extreme backlash against the dominan…
Read More…formal exploratory committee) took a similar stand, as quoted on Statesman.com: Get government out of the way of our education so we can educate ourselves and our children. There are some people in our government who aren’t interested in the same things that you and I are interested in. They are trying to create some kind of world order. Bachmann touted her background as an Iowan and a homeschool mom. She told the crowd: “The family has a level of…
Read More…ll experience the same cognitive dissonance that Richmond experienced, and come to his same conclusion: Now I am wondering why, if two gay people want to commit their lives to one another, they should ever be denied that chance. No church or pastor should be forced to perform those ceremonies, and they can choose not to recognize gay marriage for their adherents. But the constitution of the Presbyterian Church does not explicitly forbid a pastor f…
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