Religion Dispatches
…ever he dies. He’s met his demise ten times now, each time emerging with a new face and new personality. The first three episodes of the current season use that regeneration as the jumping-off point for a sort of trilogy exploring the show’s interlocking themes of identity, morality, and integrity. As years pass and more actors step into the role, it becomes increasingly important for each performer to distinguish their version of the Doctor from…
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…chen’s trust. This show deserves a smart and skeptical audience. Cheer for Kimmy when she insists we “stand up and say, ‘We’re different. We’re the strong ones, and you can’t break us!’” Our unabashed love for Tina Fey might tempt us to give her a pass here—surely one more depiction of new religions as crazy and abusive can’t be that bad. But we cannot underestimate how little Americans actually know about new religions, or how much damage misconc…
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…apartheid South Africa, where a notoriously brutal regime that, just like New England, saw itself as a “New Israel,” survived until 1990. This is the darker side of Calvinism that Robinson has seldom if ever discussed, and it would really help her case for Calvinist “liberality” if she could also acknowledge the shadow side. For example, she might consider asking the Irish what they think of Oliver Cromwell’s Christian charity. To my mind it’s Mi…
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…hosts) interviewed me. On the Internet, Mark Karlin of Buzzflash strongly promoted our work, accurately dubbing Palin a ‘Manchurian candidate.’ New York Times religion reporter Laurie Goodstein interviewed us at considerable length and quoted me in her NYT story on Palin. She was one of the few journalists assigned to the beat (Garance Burke, writing for the Associated Press, also stood out) who got it. Her story, without actually naming the New…
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…that woman’s capacity for reason matches man’s is humorous.” The affinity between New Atheist and Manosphere values is clearest in the popularity of the phrase “The Church of Feminism.” Women are coming forward about the prevalence of sexual assault? The Manosphere replies that the “Church of Feminism” is whipping up moral panic to “feel superior to others, while remaining a persecuted victim despite being an overwhelming majority.” Feminists dec…
Read More…aplaincy for service members with non-religious beliefs and practices. The new faith code is significant in a number of ways. First, for Bradley and Humanist service members, it means that their existential disposition and associated practices are designated in their military records with language not shaped primarily in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am…
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…ry becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from a Deseret News listicle, “20 companies with religious roots.” Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any o…
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…r articles 98, 160, and 161 of the Egyptian Penal Code. According to Egypt News Daily, the prosecution first sought to charge him in connection with disseminating Innocence of Muslims but when this accusation was proven false, they revised their strategy to target the content of Saber’s video blog. Though sentenced to three years and released on bail he was subsequently locked up due to a clerical error before being released on December 17. Saber’…
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…ugh Rio de Paz, a human right group led by a local pastor. By that time I knew something about prison culture, and I also knew there would likely be a prison church leader. What was the culture of the prison? At night, there was one guard for 800 prisoners. In the Rio prison system there’s no real government presence; state control in the prisons is just a façade. The prison gangs are the most powerful presence, but the church exerts a strong infl…
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…ontend, are not granted by either document, only recognized in them; these rights exist only because they were granted by God. That “endowed by the Creator” argument has been made repeatedly by Republican politicians in speeches lately, including Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich. That’s the new “values voters” rhetoric: government is a tyrant, disobedient to God. Sure, all the anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-secularism stuff i…
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