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The Sacramental American Day of Thanks

…ncoln) and its sacred shrines (cemeteries at Gettysburg and Arlington, any number of memorials on the Washington Mall, and more recently, Oklahoma City, the Pentagon and Ground Zero in New York). Perhaps most important, the US civil religion boasts its own calendar of “secular” holidays. These days, actually constituting a quasi-sacred calendar, span the entire calendar year: New Year’s Day, the King Holiday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fou…

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The Best Books Media of 2008

…afflicted by a disease that flays them alive, over and over, for 27 years; Vietnam vets trapped in their own stories; victims of AIDS in Calcutta, trapped in Mother Theresa’s story; another friend of the author, his head stuck in a plastic bag. And yet, The Book of Calamities never wallows. Trachtenberg is as humble as he is nimble, and both qualities are prerequisites for his inquiry—or rather, set of inquiries, since the book is framed as “Five…

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Revelations from Family of Secrets (an addendum)

…r National Guard in order to avoid military service that might send him to Vietnam; how he failed to fulfill that service; and how his failure was systematically covered-up and politically defused. Also covered are the allegations of how W. was an abuser of illegal drugs in addition to his apparently drinking problems as a young man. One important story from W.’s past that has long been rumored is confirmed in this book. It is a story that perhaps…

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Boy Gets Boy, Saves Earth: A Gay Christian Writer’s Plan to Change the World

…e Milk and Brokeback that straight people get behind,” Moore said in a telephone interview from his home in New York City. “The heroes die terrible deaths or endure terrible tragedies. And the characters like us that we see on TV are often the gay version of the Stepin Fetchit stereotype. Mine will be the first show where the gay character is a true hero and he isn’t doomed.” Moore’s novel, a “Best of 2008” selection by the young-adult division of…

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No, Rush Limbaugh Did Not Hijack Your Parents’ Christianity

…d James Dobson as part of the background noise. In 2016, when overwhelming numbers of white evangelicals backed Donald Trump, it seemed that Limbaugh had the edge over Dobson when it came to discipling white evangelicals. How else could one explain the apparent betrayal of “family values” evangelicalism? Their salt-of-the-earth Christianity had been hijacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Except it hadn’t. At least not if hijacking entails taking…

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Transforming America’s Israel Lobby

…erican Jews who want the occupation to end. Some of us marched against the Vietnam War and even the Iraq War. Some of us give money to help victims in Darfur and fund shelters for battered women here at home. Few of us can bring ourselves to say much out loud about the battering of an entire people, if we are within the Jewish communal tent. Until very recently, I was in that category, looking back on my own reactions to sundry allegations of bad…

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The Christian Century is Dead

…Protestant churches through the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, anti-Vietnam War movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the battles for women’s rights and gay rights in the ‘70s and ‘80s. However, they lost many of their foot soldiers during the Clinton era, when they went into hibernation inside a non-descript office building titled “the God Box” (because of all the religious organizations housed therein). While hunkered down in this…

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To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

…appraisal of how religion, politics, and economics were interwoven in post-Vietnam American culture and society, To Serve God and Wal-Mart is also a bracing reminder that we, among the most materialistic people in the world, have turned a blind eye to the impact of material conditions on our actions, attitudes, and beliefs. Simply put, the 2008 election’s voting bloc du jour, “Wal-Mart Moms,” are more than a pundit’s wet dream or Rodeo Drive’s wor…

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Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

…and revival.” He also believes that Hurricane Katrina, Watergate, and the Vietnam War are the result of divine wrath. As part of his curriculum review for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills process, Marshall issued an assessment of a Grade 5 history section in which students are asked to “describe the accomplishments of significant colonial leaders such as Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, John Smith, and Roger Williams.” Marshall, along with…

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The Zeitgeist Debate

…section on the Fed, amid a jumble of claims that veer from World War II to Vietnam to the Patriot Act to an indictment of Fox News, including superimposing Howard Beale’s rant from Network over an image of Rupert Murdoch, the film also links the Bush family to support of Hitler — a claim also made and documented by non-rightwingers.  Fixated on “one world” conspiracy theories, the film glorifies Lou Dobbs for reporting on the North American Union…

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