Search for "More About Buddhism & Science"

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e human beings yearning to be made whole and that’s what the gospel is all about. It’s not about saving sinners. Do you think your view of Christianity will become the majority view at some point? No, and that doesn’t worry me, because every image in the Bible is a minority image. The Christian church is to be the yeast in the bread, the light in the darkness, the salt in the soup. It’s never supposed to be Christendom running the world. We are to…

A 14-Point Rebuttal to The Nashville Statement from a Straight Cis Christian Man

By Eric Reitan

…of God’s people—then you may want to rethink your theory. And if you care about your theories more than you care about the lessons of compassionate attention to your LGBT neighbors, you may want to rethink your claim that you love them. And if extracting rigid gender and sexual requirements from the Bible (or natural law traditions) matters more to you that living by the law of love that Christ laid down, you may want to ask whether that comes fr…

Bishop Says Gay Couples Cannot Be Part of Parish Life; Does Rising Evangelical Political Power in Brazil Contribute to Anti-LGBT Violence?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tion of a subject he has an extraordinary interest in. If he wants to talk about what is unnatural about any aspect of sexual orientation he need look no further than his own reflection – denial of what is an everyday reality for many people is certainly not natural.” Anglican Communion: A way forward? The Institute of Public Affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science last month published “Anglicans and Sexuality: A Way Forwar…

Sarah Palin: Bus Tour of Destruction

By Anthea Butler

…ly jesting about one of these pronouncements; but the fact is, Palin isn’t about rebuilding. She’s about destruction. There is a reason she was called “rogue.” Leave it to Saturday Night Live to once again capture the essence of Sarah Palin. In a deft mashup of the film 2012 and campaign clips, the destruction that ensues from the election of Sarah Palin as president in 2012 seems to be a prophecy that rivals any armageddon scene the Left Behind s…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…’m more in line with Pope Francis: I don’t think we need to worry or think about or be concerned about doctrine.” For her, there are just two rules that matter: “We believe in Christ, we believe in the gospel of justice — they’re the basic doctrines.” Among those spoke at the World Meeting of Families was Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Apostle D. Todd Christofferson; the LDS church made a “significant financial contribution” to the co…

Taking (Public School) Teachers to Church, and the Mosque, and the Temple…

By Lisa Webster

…ardness and confusion that my students feel whenever I begin to teach them about faiths they don’t know anything about.” And Suki Highers, a Social Studies teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas said: “It blew my mind. Overnight, I am completely re-thinking my class curriculum.” So during this program, teachers experienced religious practices up close and personal. But what happens when a teacher goes home and tries to take her class to the local Shint…

What We Really Talk About When We Talk About Health Care

By Douglas Harrison

…ced that all the sound and fury generated by the health care debate is not about health care at all, but about a segment of white, Christian America finding in the health care controversy a sufficiently capacious political occasion to give expression to an intense but incoherent feeling of being displaced from the seat of cultural dominance. It’s the same feeling of helpless rage animating the revival of the militia movement, the same desperate-ti…

Politics in a Fallen World: Lying, Fact-Checkers, and the Future of Civilization

By Michael Schulson

…st changes drastically once that rhetorical tradition phases out. Thinking about transitions in lying: something about this concept of fact-checking feels native to the internet age. It’s hard to imagine something like it existing even thirty years ago. There certainly were no fact-checkers during the period of the things that I was working on. Aside from the Garden of Eden, [The Devil Wins] is not about any particular lie. The issue of determinin…

What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

By Jonathan Rosenblum

…rmative moment for many of us activists in Seattle. The lessons we learned—about the tactics and methods of mass protest, about dealing with raw emotions amid street chaos, police batons, and tear gas, and most of all, about the recognition that when we fight, we can win—shaped so many of us. For me, there’s a lot about the WTO that explains the Seattle labor movement and why we were successful in Sea-Tac. What are some of the biggest misconceptio…

Jeb Bush’s “New Way” Of Talking About Gay Marriage

By Sarah Posner

…which goes against the tide of public opinion, not that they are squeamish about talking about homosexuality. Which they may well also be.) “[W]hat do Republican candidates plan to do to protect religious liberty in this new legal environment for gay rights?” Dreher demanded. “It’s not enough to mouth pro-religious platitudes. Conservatives must expect more.” Six days later, Bush was on camera with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody,…