Religion Dispatches
…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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…calculated pi long enough, you’d eventually find the works of Shakespeare coded in 1’s and 0’s. “Somewhere inside the digits of pi is a representation for all of us — the atomic coordinates of all our atoms, our genetic code, a coding of our motions and all our thoughts through time, all our memories…. Given this fact, all of us are alive, and hopefully happy, in pi. Pi makes us live forever. We all lead virtual lives in pi. We are immortal,” Pic…
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…ve about the history, and the troubled and often exploitative relationship between black communities and medical experimentation. And yet they found something appealing in this. Part of the appeal is Rick Kittles, who’s this African-American geneticist, who many of them told me explicitly that they trust. So, that’s part of it. I think part of it is that they’re weighing the stakes. The forms of technology that we are dealing with in the 21st cent…
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…Rev. Stephen Broden, who gave a “benediction” at Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “Code Red” anti-health care rally). Broden claimed that “the social justice movement is built upon or predicated on the idea of liberation theology.” (They are, in fact, two separate religious movements.) “Liberation theology has its origin or source in socialism, communism, and Marxism,” he continued. (Not true; as assistant professor at Harvard Divinity School and RD contr…
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…xactly a year prior to this past weekend’s event, where violence broke out between Feucht-supporting right-wing extremists and anti-fascist protesters. The date of these concerts alone, 8/8, should give us pause, since the number 88 is, as documented by the Anti-Defamation League, “a white supremacist numerical code for ‘Heil Hitler.’” And this year, Feucht openly expressed admiration for his anti-government, “patriot” militia “security team.” htt…
Read More…tor of fake news and alternative facts. And the way fake news tends to get better reception among conservatives than liberals, even by a two-to-one margin, has also been recognized. (When one fake news creator was interviewed, he explained, “We’ve tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments, and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”) What is it ab…
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…of entire groups of people, it relies on the same eliminatory principles. Between 1993 and 2016 eleven people were murdered by anti-abortion extremists, and there were 26 attempted murders; and between 1977 and 2015 there were 7,200 reported instances of anti-abortion violence. This includes some 200 instances of arson and bombings of abortion clinics. And, even with legislation passed in their favor, the anti-abortion rhetoric hasn’t stopped, in…
Read More…oing to voters on November 8 has a good chance of passing and it should be coded as ED, E for embarrassing and D for disgraceful. Both Republican and Democratic candidates for governor of that great state have endorsed the measure. It proposes to redefine the basic word “person,” applying it to fertilized eggs. The goal of this mischief, as many have noted, is to outlaw all abortions with no exceptions—even for rape or incest, or when a woman’s li…
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…ning) than on religion, defined in terms of religious institutions. Ethics codes, like the Code of Ethics for Nurses of the American Nurses Association, emphasize the importance of patients’ spiritual well-being and the NANDA International, which develops language around nursing diagnoses, recognizes three diagnoses related to spirituality and spiritual distress. In medical and broader public discourse about religion, spirituality, and medicine, i…
Read More…s, with a seat on the House Intelligence Committee, Mrs. Bachmann you know better. Shame on you, Michele! You should stand on the floor of the House and apologize to Huma Abedin and to Secretary Clinton and to the millions of hardworking, loyal, Muslim Americans for your wild and unsubstantiated charges. As a devoted Christian, you need to ask forgiveness for this grievous lack of judgment and reckless behavior. (emphasis mine) House Speaker John…
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