Search for "cheap airline tickets from dom. rep. phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…he politically-motivated attacks that began the day I was announced as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008.” Perhaps that, in the end, accounts for her popularity. We live in an age where victimization carries undeniable cachet. If you can somehow make the case that you’ve been treated unfairly or that your tribe (Republicans, “patriotic Americans,” the white citizens of Arizona, underappreciated veterans, the religious right) is so…

Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

By Vincent Gonzalez

…l of religious social networking. The original had read, “To all them that repent, the Lord grants forgiveness, if they turn in penitence to the unity of God, and to communion with the bishop.” Penance’s splash screen, on the other hand, is agnostic even concerning its own efficacy: “To all them that repent, may they find forgiveness.” But Penance gathers its sacred power precisely through agnosticism. While existent applications for socially-netw…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…It ensures that the US makes public proclamations about democracy and freedom, while in reality, democracy is subsumed and sacrificed every day to self-interest, be that oil or domestic support for Israel. Realpolitik ideologues fear the unleashing of Arab democracy, because in the battle for resources, for alliances and for fraternity, they have largely sided against Muslims. Muslims, and Arabs in particular, have been conditioned by decades o…

Possible Heir to Dalai Lama Cleared of Corruption Charges

By Tsering Namgyal

…The affair has also unsettled the sentiments of those living in India’s predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region, which separates China from India. There were large protests in the capitals of both Ladakh and Sikkim, as well as in the capital Delhi, even though media failed to give much coverage. Western followers of Tibetan Buddhism, a significant source of tourist revenue to Himachal Pradesh and elsewhere, remain extremely disappointed, more at t…

The Social Science Animal: Brooks Argues for Emotion over Reason

By Beatrice Marovich

…But instead of inspiring figures of human potential, they come off more as cheap foils that Brooks is using to market his theories to the wealthy, literate class of policy wonks that he hopes will take his ideas seriously. More, Brooks is no Rousseau. And no novelist. If there is something mildly, warmly inspiring about his theoretical claims, they fall flat when explored through the medium of these sadly hollow characters. Brooks is perhaps best…

Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

By Peter Laarman

…avior. Most religious doomsayers do not seriously believe that any radical repentance will occur; and they rather hope that it won’t, because they so relish the thought of the wicked being consumed as the cups of divine wrath are poured out. Doomsday Deferred: The Nuclear Overhang It may be helpful to recall that popular anxiety about The End has actually been with us for quite some time—at least from the moment in July 1945 when Manhattan Project…

There’s No Business Like the Bible Business: 200 Years of the ABS

By Paul Harvey

…cts, images of a white dude who is supposed to be Jesus, and so on and on. Numbers appear through this book, sometimes with numbing frequency and volume. Thousands of Bibles in the early years of the ABS; tens of thousands some decades later; millions and millions through the course of the twentieth century. The numbers document the stunning capacity of the ABS to flood the zone with Scriptures. Through the book, the ABS accomplished exactly that…

Watching Preachers’ Daughters Right After the Boston Bombings While Teaching a Class on Augustine’s Confessions

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…the reductive “purity” rhetoric with something reductive of my own, like a cheap criticism that Christianity is anti-sex and anti-body. Which brings me to Augustine’s Confessions, and specifically, reading Augustine’s Confessions with my Intro Theology class this week. Internet, I love Augustine Confessions. I love, love, love, love Augustine’s Confessions. I love it even when I want to throw it across the room and curse. It’s a complicated love,…

When Being “Christian” Means Supporting Trump: An Argument For Hiding Your Faith

By Jonathan Malesic

…ve Christians have married their self-understanding to the fortunes of the Republican Party’s presidential candidates. Even if that candidate manifestly aims only at self-aggrandizement, well, so be it. In the Bush years, conservative Christians were triumphant—and triumphalist. They celebrated Bush’s election as a reassertion of America’s essentially Christian character. Richard John Neuhaus, the founding editor of First Things, wrote in 2005 tha…

Why the ‘Confession & Redemption’ Path is Unlikely to Help Falwell Recover from Sex Scandal

By Chrissy Stroop

…sked her on Monday whether she still expected redemption for Falwell, Bass replied, “I can’t see that evangelicals would be forgiving of a threesome,” although “some cases of sexual misconduct and even abuse are forgiven in evangelical communities.” According to Bass, “the Ted Haggard scandal showed that evangelicals are less-than-forgiving with same-sex affairs. Falwell’s actions fall into the same category.” Calvin College Associate Professor of…