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How an Ancient Story of Renegade Rabbis Caught With Black Market Technology Can Help Us Navigate ChatGPT’s Apocalyptic Aura

…generations would gain access to unprecedented riches of learning, as each new scholar’s wisdom could be passed on to new communities. The Talmud is a heavily edited literary compilation, not a record of a single conversation, so even though it’s presented as a live issue in the story, the very fact that readers are encountering the tale in the Talmud—a work literally made possible by the technology in debate—means that writing down rabbinic teach…

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Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

…The Unlikely Disciple, then, comes to seem like the expression of a brave new world and, in it, a new way of writing about religion in this country. It’s not the first book of the kind, but it struck me as the first to fall so comfortably into the time and place. We no longer need (since we are all “we” now) to muckrake and expose the other. Now, the necessary work is understanding, compromise, and shared humanity. These cozy themes have always w…

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Is Change Possible? Shifting the Ex-Gay Question

…lation that imperils gay life and livelihood, perhaps? Will we see strange new coalitions of gays and ex-gays opposing homophobic bullying? Or even stranger new dividing lines between gays, straights, and ex-gays who uphold the centrality of marriage as an institution and queers and others who support new experiments in social organization—a possibility recently postulated in a recent New York Times op-ed by former gay marriage opponent David Blan…

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Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

…n all too real variation on this theme of worldly desolation played out in New Orleans, as tens of thousands of New Orleanians fled an approaching Category 3 hurricane, leaving behind thousands of their fellow residents too immobilized by poverty or other factors to escape the hurricane’s onslaught. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Mississippi and Louisiana coast, packing 125 mph winds and strong waves and producing a storm…

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Do Not Arrest the Pope: New Atheists’ Call for the Pope’s Arrest Isn’t Likely to Produce Justice

…cusing him of. More broadly, they want the Pope—a symbol of everything the New Atheists revile—to face a very public and very humiliating defeat. And so, at the instigation of these leaders of the new atheist movement, Robertson and another lawyer, Mark Stephens, are developing a legal case on the basis of which they hope to “ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against…

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The Spirit of January 6th: The Theology of This Seldom Discussed Movement Animates the Growing Threat to U.S. Democracy

…verred, “is predict which individual upon hearing the rhetoric of clear or coded incitement will turn to violence.” Berlet’s essay was titled “Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence.” Indeed, villain identification has been going on for a long time, and NAR leaders are now featuring ancient scripts for modern violence and religious war. We hear it in the form of imprecatory prayers by religious and politic…

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Critics of Hasidic Schools Exposé Missed the Point: It Wasn’t Antisemitic or the Product of Secular Bias — It’s a Story of Corruption

…I was reminded of this incident as I read the recent feature in the Sunday New York Times on public funding of hasidic schools in New York City which has raised an enormous backlash on social media and among many American Jews. Accusations of bias, unfairness, and even antisemitism, have floated across social media and Jewish journalism. It seems to me that there are a variety of issues here that have become mashed into one large set of accusation…

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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

…wn as The Family Channel. This story has two morals: The first is that Fox News and Robertson’s “news” deserve about the same degree of respect from journalists. Second, critics have raised questions about the legality of financial transactions related to Robertson’s business empire. Although at this point there’s no way to determine how well these accusations would hold up in court, we can easily imagine more diligent investigations. 3) Robertson…

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Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

…nking nostrums that made a phenomenon out of The Secret. “[N]ow there is a new role model for New York’s former Carrie Bradshaws—young women who are vegetarian, well versed in self-help and New Age spirituality, and who are finding a way to make a living preaching to eager audiences, mostly female,” reported the Times. One 31-year-old member of this eager audience is quoted praising her spiritual tutor Gabrielle Bernstein, a 29-year-old former nig…

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Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?

…ity to make it feel like it might, in fact, be true. “If Bloomberg wins in New York City, it is the triumph of corporate capitalism in New York City,” says Durkee. But, with his collar on, Reverend Billy describes the mayor more bluntly: “We’re going to cast out this devil, children!” “Fake” Healing Post-9/11 Both Talen and Durkee had alienating experiences with religion growing up. Durkee describes her father as a “fundamentalist Muslim,” though…

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