Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 how to use 1xbet free bet promo code Puerto Rico

Why I Boycotted a Conference at Brigham Young University

…from a group of present and former Mormon students who called themselves “Free BYU.” Because of a Brigham Young University policy, Mormon students who lose their faith, convert to another religion, or leave the church are automatically expelled from the University; and they lose their housing, scholarship, and campus jobs at the same time. This seemed so counter to the spirit of academic freedom—and to the very issues of religious liberty that th…

Read More

Space X and the Photo-Op: Trump’s Use of the Bible Was Just the Latest in a Series of Christian Nationalist Messages

…ace Force: God’s hand will guide these space soldiers in their “defense of freedom”—that is, the freedom of commercial enterprise. The administration advertised the biblical foundations of its protectionist pursuit of dominance in space with a ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral on January 12th, 2020. At an event that conflated Christian supremacism with American exceptionalism, the first Chief of Space Operations was sworn in on a King…

Read More

Hulu’s ‘Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia’ Shows That We Can No Longer Ignore Connections Between Religion and Drugs

…ethamphetamine, xenon, ibogaine, bufotenine, and LSD. Although the show focuses on users and researches of the drugs in question, Morris often acts as a participant-observer, using the drugs himself to report their effects. Whatever the drug in question, however, the narrative always seems to circle back to questions relating to religion, in both explicit and inexplicit ways. Morris doesn’t so much present theses about the relationship between rel…

Read More

Are Kosher Delis Like Catholic Hospitals?

…hypothetical and puts his finger on exactly how it distorts the interplay between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause: The analogy to “forcing kosher delis to sell ham,” put forward by Bishop William Lori, exemplifies the way the problem is misunderstood. In America (unlike in Israel), people have the right to choose whether they want to sell ham and whether they want to consume it; neither option is proscribed. We all might agr…

Read More

Should Evangelicals Smoke Pot?

…ouch says this: We at Christianity Today believe Christians are absolutely free to use marijuana (where legalized). And, when it comes to pot in our particular cultural context, we think it would be foolish to use that freedom. For the CT editors, the moral quality of marijuana use seems to depend entirely upon the “cultural context” in which it occurs. And since our particular context is not conducive to marijuana use, marijuana use would be “foo…

Read More

Mike Johnson’s Porn-Monitoring isn’t Just ‘Creepy’ — it’s a Window to the Fascist Desire Driving the White Evangelical Will to Power

…The church must remain clear that pornography is not essentially wrong because it is addictive, but because of its titillating and deceptive message: it rips sexuality from its relational context and presents human beings not as creatures made in God’s image, but as sexual commodities, something to be bought and sold.” Johnson’s comment about Roe v. Wade curtailing the production of “able bodied workers” essential to a thriving economy suggests th…

Read More

Capricology: Week 3: Apotheosis, Anyone?

…tual world, but as someone who teaches about race, and slavery, you can be free even if others don’t think you are, or are worthy of being free. The bigger question that goes alongside of this is: can you become divine if you’re not real? Hmmn. That brings up all sorts of issues, especially if, as it seems presently, the writers are making this new religion suspiciously like Catholicism. I hope that the writers won’t go in the easy direction of co…

Read More

The Quiet Part is Very Much Out Loud: Conservative Publication Calls For Embrace of Totalitarianism

…e Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.” This would, of course, mean making abortion a crime—and jailing women and their doctors for murder, a crime which in some states is still punishable by death. Davidson’s totalitarian dream would also entail finding a solution to what he calls…

Read More

Pope Tweeted into Retirement

…Paul did embrace social media as it existed then. He was the first pope to use SMS to send out a daily message to Catholics in 2004, after brokering a deal with Verizon—one of the first troubling commercial agreements between the Vatican and communications companies. For the most part, though, communications technologies at this time seemed a grand and wonderful thing, enabling the sharing of God’s truths with many in an easy and effective way. In…

Read More

Does “Religious Freedom” Deserve Scare Quotes?

…or the right not to be fired for who you are. The right-wing legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is forthright about which particular religion’s freedom it looks to defend through its aggressive litigation and lobbying. “As secular forces chip away at our nation’s Judeo-Christian roots, religious freedom is increasingly threatened,” ADF writes on its website. A person’s faith, ADF says, is “more than where you worship on Sundays. It…

Read More