Religion Dispatches
…Netsweeper, the library’s Internet filtering service, blocks all of these sites because they are categorized as “occult” and “criminal skills” sites. Netsweeper, a global corporation based in Canada, categorizes websites and allows clients to choose which ones to block. In addition to following state and federal laws to block child pornography, the Salem Library also elected to block all sites that Netsweeper categorized as related to the “occult…
Read More…week, conservative clergy have decided to form an entity separate from the official Episcopal Church. According to the Christian Science Monitor, a “network of groups from the United States and Canada… [prepared to] unveil a draft constitution for a unified entity that they hope will be recognized by Anglicans elsewhere in the world.” The newspaper reported that the group was “encouraged to take this step by a group of leaders in the global Anglic…
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…of big data, are omniscient. They beat us at chess, at Go. With prediction sites, they can see into the future. Part of the appeal with Silver’s site, I think, is that he lays bare the cogs of the algorithm. To me, though, there’s something unappetizing about it. It reminds me of this story where Target started sending ads for baby stuff to this house. The dad there was like, what’s going on? Turns out that his daughter was pregnant, and Target ha…
Read More…rious threat — that of Islamism — and makes it into a cartoon.” At the web site Jews On First, which follows the religious right, a number of analysts contributed to Rebutting Obsession, which as the name suggests, cuts through the film’s ahistorical, conspiratorial, and propagandistic claims. Writing around the same time in the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz described the Clarion Fund as: a front for neoconservative and Israeli pressure group…
Read More…y in Baghdad has raised, and will continue to raise, the issue with senior officials from the government of Iraq, and has urged them to respond appropriately to all credible reports of violence against gay and lesbian Iraqis. Iraqi LGBT (“a Human Rights group Supporting Iraqi lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people”) is in desperate need of funds “to assist … efforts to help other Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Trans gender Iraqi’s facing d…
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…port states: “She reported that SAF elements transported the bodies to the site, dumped them in the grave and using a bulldozer to cover the grave.” The area the witness identified, south of the Tilo school, is the same area where SSP’s witnesses also saw mass graves.) “There are way too many facts that Lyman’s account does not take into account,” Reeves concluded. “It’s as if the UN report does not exist.” Lyman’s skepticism is even more difficul…
Read More…of the last tour stops added to the itinerary was Atlanta and I bring this site up because it was in Atlanta that I can remember that I questioned what I was doing for the first time. The NOM showing in the heart of the Bible-belt was dismal and the hundreds of counter-protesters who showed up were nothing short of inspiring. Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I…
Read More…ter’s organizers should build elsewhere out of respect for the Ground Zero site. That, it should be said, is hardly a compelling argument.** Or as Melissa Rogers puts it on the Interfaith Alliance’s State of Belief radio show, once again religious freedom means freedom for everybody, not just the people we like. That ought to be an obvious statement, but apparently it takes some spelling out for modern conservatives. It would be nice to say that s…
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…ful for something? Submit a praise or Twanksgiving! Within 6 months of the site’s inception last year, the site received its 1000th request, attesting to the power and possibilities of religious mobile prayer on the go. Retweets? Spreading the Faith Given the burgeoning and increasingly diverse user base, another likely vision for Twitter is as a micro-sharing and mobilization platform for religious organizations. Its open and free message-spreadi…
Read More…ok for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on your church web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, the idea, hang on, am I advising people to leave their church… yes!… If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.” And the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good responded. Beck needs to get out more. I don’t know about the Bo…
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