Religion Dispatches
…ation but to make a “Passover offering.” Seven is a biblically significant number, the number of completion and perfection, and in this spring of 2007 the Praise-a-thon began on Easter Sunday, the seventh day of Passover. If you make the Passover offering, Munsey claims, God will give you seven blessings: God will dispatch an angel to lead miracles; rid you of your enemies; bless you with prosperity; heal you; give you longevity; give you an inher…
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…path seemed like a civilized approach, but then Christianity became conservative. Science was caught flat-footed, and hard pressed to understand how the majority of Americans in the 20th century could just ignore the clear-cut evidence, and wrap themselves tighter in the mythology. There is something right about these words. “Accommodation” is a civilized approach, at least when compared to “confrontation.” And I too, along with many other Christ…
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…dley’s business. Both men took lie detector tests, which they passed. Sullivan suggests that the hoax rumor may have come from rival granite workers. According to Jim Miles (author of Weird Georgia), shortly after the Guidestones were unveiled, a local minister stated his suspicion that “Mr. Christian is not a Christian” and that the monument was designed for the worship of the sun as well as the devil. Contemporary Pagans, UFO buffs, and New Ager…
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…Mpofu have powerful allies. Sekulow, who has been named one of the most influential evangelicals and prominent lawyers in America, has argued key cases in the religious right’s jurisprudential arsenal before the Supreme Court, vetted and promoted George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, and was an early endorser of and advisor to Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Sekulow is a media mogul as well; his daily radio program is heard on hundre…
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…he jihadi image of violent social change. On the other hand, a significant number of failures of nonviolent resistence may lead to a violent backlash once again. Not all protests will end like Tunisia and Egypt. Others will be ruthlessly crushed, as was the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. The current protests in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya face an uncertain end. Failure of nonviolent revolution has, in the past, been the occasion for renewe…
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…lix Spiegel called some of the practices she saw at Haggard’s church “medieval,” while René Holvast described this new way as incommensurable with modern Christianity: Conversations and discussions with some missionary colleagues did not seem to lead to mutual understanding. The usual evangelical ways of reasoning fell mute. It seemed to be not just a different way of understanding, but a different way of reasoning altogether. In fact, at the very…
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…t an LGBT nightclub in Florida and sort through a complex of potential motivations. Although the shooter called a local emergency number during the attack to pledge his allegiance to ISIS, news reports have suggested that there is to date no evidence of any connection to the group. ISIS officials have encouraged supporters to launch attacks in their home countries during Ramadan. National Public Radio reported on Saturday morning that the shooter’…
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…ere not companionship-based. They were economic arrangements. Okay, that’s number 1. Number 2, let’s say that your wife didn’t provide you with a male offspring. A man could take another wife and another wife and another wife until one of them did. This is the “sanctity of marriage” that is being protected. Are you kidding me? Wow. Okay, so that’s Old Testament. Then along comes Jesus. Well for those of us who follow Jesus, I always like to point…
Read More…ssible worldviews (a biblical one and a humanist one that comes in several varieties) and that both worldview are in a conflict for dominion (so in their view “we” are fighting for it too). Its not that Rushdoony’s views of the biblical punishment for homosexuality have become widely accepted. The real influence is much more subtle: it’s in the now-multiple generations who have grown up in Christian schooling and Christian home schooling for whic…
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…f 2004, Lhasa city authorities changed the date of the Drepung Zhotön festival, which traditionally varies according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, in order to promote tourism. Of the various policies implemented by Chinese governmental agencies in recent years two have been the greatest source of friction between the clergy and the government. The control of the number of monks and nuns in monastic institutions, and the implementation of “patriot…
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