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Does ‘Criss-Cross Apple Sauce’ Make Yoga Secular? Opponents of Yoga in Public Schools Have a Point

…nterviewed). The 1993 Alabama State Department of Education Administrative Code prohibits public school personnel from using “any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga,” and defines yoga as “a Hindu philosophy and method of religious training in which eastern meditation and contemplation are joined with physical exercises, allegedly to facilitate the development of body-mind-spirit.” The propo…

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“Taliban Dan’s” Teacher: Inside Bill Gothard’s Authoritarian Subculture

…llas Theological Seminary, and received a favorable review in Christianity Today. Venoit told me he doesn’t consider Gothard’s organization a cult, but that Gothard’s “view of authority is the core of where things go wrong.” Gothard teaches, in the first hour of the first night of his “basic” seminar that “authority is like an umbrella of protection.” If you get out of that protection, “you are in rebellion, which is like witchcraft,” and “all evi…

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Touch Me, Man, I’m Healed, I’m Straight

…sociation in 2002 for violations of six different provisions of its ethics code, including provisions that prohibit counselors from “seek[ing] to meet their personal needs at the expense of clients,” taking advantage of the “trust and dependency of clients,” and deceptive promotion of products. At Wyler’s Arizona retreat, I was introduced to that healing touch therapy: I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leani…

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Death Penalty Inconsistent with Life

…of injustice, often seek to hide behind self-righteous indignation—often a code word for revenge. That different segments of the population, of those whose votes the candidates want, choose to be for the death penalty, cannot be—is not—a valid reason for the candidates to oppose the decision of the Supreme Court against the death penalty. Please, politicians –elected and seeking to be elected—reconsider your position. I humbly make my own the word…

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Lindsey Graham and Al Qaeda Share the Same “Allahu Akbar”

…in: “on the right path of religion.” While it does refer to Islamic moral code, it’s hardly a formal or well-defined set of rules and is often the source of much disagreement and debate amongst the most revered legal scholars. The Michele Bachmanns and Louis Ghomerts of the world, however, have convinced many people that Sharia is epitomized by rare instances of hand chopping, hangings, and other gory punishments. It’s doubtful that the governors…

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Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

…n two decades, he not only advocated violence against LGBT people but also promoted the view that homosexuality is being pushed onto Africa by the West. He threatened to execute gay people by having their heads cut off and is believed to have supported the arrest, detention and torture of a number of people on suspicion of homosexuality by the country’s National Intelligence Agency. While Barrow has so-far espoused a far more democratic and human…

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Why I’m Grateful for 2012, The Rapture, and other Millennial Delusions

…ransformation later this month precisely because things seem beyond repair today. Pre-millennial 2012ers are the ones warning of global economic collapse, and advising us all to learn subsistence agriculture and barter economics. Daniel Pinchbeck, perhaps the most famous of the bunch—and a colleague and sometime editor of mine in the Evolver network and its publications—has taken this view several times. (Admittedly, he was right the last time, wh…

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Democratic Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Makes Faith 101 Misstep

…t Buttigieg (and all the other candidates) to read Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, and internalize its lessons. Social leaders who want to effect meaningful change are condemned to represent the interests of their group, even though doing so might contradict their personal moral code. The short version of Niebuhr is that you can lead or you can have clean hands, not both. In 2019 America, that means you can embrace the people who are actu…

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Why We’re Not Prepared to Prosecute White Nationalist Violence

…yed to produce such a charge. Further exemplifying the Islamophobia within today’s counterterrorism approach, the Russian Imperial Movement, a foreign—but non-militant Islamist—organization, had its own designation made up for it (Specially Designated Global Terrorists) so as not to fall under the legal implications of an FTO. Illustrating this double-standard is the case of Ethan Melzer. In 2020, the Kentucky-born U.S. Army private was charged wi…

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Catholic Anti-Nuke Activists Looking at 20 Years in Prison a True Test for Religious Freedom

…ons, such as a Sikh who successfully sued the Army in 2015 over a grooming code that would have required him to shave his beard and remove his turban. Justice, not to mention old wisdom about geese and ganders, demands that our judicial system should treat like cases alike. Either sincere religious conviction should be a defense, or it shouldn’t. There should be a healthy debate about the place and extent of religious exemption in contemporary, pl…

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