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On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

…For All One of Luther’s most popular writings is his pamphlet called “The Freedom of a Christian,” in which he declares that a Christian is free from all earthly authority through the power of the gospel, which establishes a reconciled relationship with God—a quite subversive political orientation since it relativizes all earthly authority. At the same time, this gospel creates in the believer a desire to serve the neighbor, not to satisfy any la…

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The Christian Roots of the New Age: The Aquarian Gospel

…Gnostic” manner in which Jesus is presented in this “Aquarian Gospel,” two central contentions of the Christian faith become far more contentious: 1) How could this figure, whose will is already “submerged in Holy Breath,” pray not to go through with the coming ordeal in the Garden of Gethsemane; and 2) Why in the world was his death a requirement to bring about the reunification of humanity with its Creator? If God is opposed to sacrifice, then h…

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Before Breitbart: How Right Wing Media Transformed American Politics

…ally against Khrushchev’s visit in 1959. The next year Young Americans for Freedom, a central organization of the conservative movement, was born at Buckley’s Connecticut estate. The infrastructure of the modern conservative movement was built by media activists—the outlets, the organizations, the politics. It was a distinctly new type of activism, and one that has shaped American conservatism for more than half a century. Given how influential co…

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Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

…nst Dillard, she defended the letter as divinely inspired—an expression of free speech and freedom of religion. Burkhart had trouble finding doctors for her own clinic, when she started exploring the idea of reopening the practice several years ago. One in-state doctor expressed interest, but after his local hospital learned about it, Burkhart said, they threatened to terminate his contract. An anonymous doctor who will work at the clinic describe…

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Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

…ess creativity of the universe and the objective validity of human rights. Promoting and accepting religious images as universal will help heal culture war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition. Frederick Clarkson: Thanks for hosting this discussion, Linell. I think these matters are integral to the functioning, the advance, and indeed the survival of Constitutional democracy. But I think that in order to give…

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The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

…her successes. Faith, as that Pope never tired of repeating, can never be promoted by force; truth’s power lies its truthfulness, nothing more. Now in a great many ethical and political matters, John Paul II was as anti-modern a Pope as the Church has seen in recent memory; his successor even more so. But on the devilish topic of religion, science and free enquiry, these same Popes have elected to stand emphatically on the side of the moderns. Th…

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Free Will, Fate and FiveThirtyEight: The Theology of Election Polls

…kind of freedom in order to have another. MHS: You mean that you trade the freedom to choose for the freedom of a world that feels unconstrained by predetermined trajectories? AL: Precisely. Which, bizarrely, means that free will is actually more constrained! MHS: Well, that’s kind of the ethic behind big data, right? That, at least in aggregate, decisions that feel like free choice actually follow very clear and pre-determined patterns, and these…

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Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

…tisfied customers at restaurants want to get their dish for free, or get a free glass of wine, or a free dessert, because that balances out the input-output equation. So if the customer service agent gives you something, then you feel compensated, then you’re okay, and it’s not such a cognitive puzzle, and also not such a frustration to deal with the amorphous agent of the airline as a whole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the customer service age…

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The Problem of Evil in Free Market Theology

…s: a heresy. In this new world, the belligerently pro-business wing of the Republican Party—with its unwavering commitment to free markets, deregulation, extended tax cuts, and an image of America as a providential city on a very wealthy hill—suddenly appears more clearly in its true light. They are the Gnostics, the elite heretics, whereas the Social Democrats are ironically true heirs to an orthodox gospel of compassionate care for the least amo…

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Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

…oorly reconstructed Ba’athists on the Muslim margins.) Suleiman stressed: “Freeing slaves” is so frequently mentioned as a meritorious act in the Muslim tradition that, in the 8th and 9th centuries, biographies of Prophetic companions cited, as virtues, manumission; Muhammad’s wife, Aisha, was lauded for “freeing six hundred slaves.” All well and good: Muhammad changed what slavery meant, or at least sought to, and the tradition developed in respo…

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