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The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

…found my “people” and my sense of belonging. It was the most thrilling and freeing experience of my high school life. The dancing, the moving, the drums, the parking lot scene where along with veggie burritos, beautiful beaded jewelry, and other crafts, I found a real sense of community. If music can be an intoxicant, then American Beauty was my gateway drug. It introduced me to other Dead albums and I devoured each one. Eventually I found my fell…

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The Legacy of Bush, Gambler of Other People’s Fortunes, Is Still With Us

…where we are going again, is the hottest nuclear zone on earth: Pakistan, India, China, they all have the bomb. I do not rehearse all of this as a morality tale; Dostoevsky would have none of that. “Now, whether gain and profit are despicable things is another question. And I am not going to try to answer it here” (29). I do not say this simply to relive the past either. Just the opposite. I say all of this because it is a cautionary tale for the…

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Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

…s. Throughout the twentieth century, Panama received Muslims from Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and West Indian countries such as Jamaica. Each group worked to establish their own religious institutions and the support systems necessary to flourish as religious minorities in a Catholic country. In the 1960s and 70s, Lebanese immigrants collected money from their growing business enterprises to create their own mosque, cemetery and Arabic school in Col…

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Supreme Court Rules Religion is Special… This Time

…ly is special. This is why the First Amendment grants us both the right to free speech and the right to the free exercise of religion—because speech and religion are not the same thing. I think the Founders were right. The basic principle that the free exercise of religion requires that government should refrain as much as possible from getting involved in ecclesiastical decisions is surely sound. For the same reason, on the other hand, we must st…

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NPR Gives a Free Pass to Biblical Literalists

…not ceded and will never cede the Bible to those who devoutly want God’s Word and God’s will to align with their own prejudice. NPR should be embarrassed to broadcast an ostensibly analytic piece that concludes by giving a free pass to the literalists and by reinforcing the notion that those of us who read the Bible for its core message are really not reading it at all. Eagerly awaiting the next pledge drive, (Rev.) Peter Laarman Los Angeles…

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Blankets, Booties, and Jesus: Spiritual War on the Uterus in Rick Perry’s Texas

…ders must meet are “maintain[ing] a pro-life mission and agree[ing] not to promote, refer, or counsel in favor of abortion or abortifacients as an option to a crisis or unplanned pregnancy” and “agree[ing] not to promote the teaching or philosophy of any religion while providing services to the client.” Yet most, if not all, of the centers maintain that Christian faith is central to their mission. Many are affiliated with Care Net, which describes…

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Christian Morality vs. Free Markets: The Constants of a Conservative

…rdline traditionalist Brent Bozell posed to early fusionists in the 1960s: freedom or virtue? Is it more important to exercise freedom of choice regardless of the moral outcome, or is it more important that an individual’s choices align with traditional moral dictates? Some scholars have suggested that liberal arguments, such as those touting rights and freedoms, are politically useful for hardline religious candidates because they allow them to a…

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Destruction, Or, Why Do Fundamentalists Seem To Enjoy Blowing Things Up?

…oppression cannot be far behind. Conversely, if a God is disclosed who is free to come and go, free from and even against the regime, free to hear and even answer slave cries, free from all proper goodness as defined by the empire, then it will bear decisively upon sociology because the freedom of God will surface in the brickyards and manifest itself as justice and compassion. Just so. The “still-speaking” God is a far bigger threat to fundament…

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Praying To The God Of The SUV

…her action means that we are simply automatons. There would be no need for free will if God is simply manipulating us in each moment. The free will exercised that day by the hijackers didn’t come out of the blue. The attacks were in response to what they saw as American arrogance in the world and failed foreign policies in the Middle East. The attacks came because of a large man-made mess that had been years in the making. Detroit prays for a mira…

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Free Yiddish Lessons, Vacation Liberty School, and Brangelina’s Universalism: The Week in Religion, Poetically

…ogy in March has earned him an entire issue of the Church of Scientology’s Freedom magazine. The issue is dedicated to attacking him and his claims about the church. A Moscow court convicted two art curators of “inciting hatred” against Christians for their 2007 exhibition of various controversial pieces, including an image of Jesus with a Mickey Mouse head. Convicted serial killer David Berkowitz, known as the Son of Sam, has found religion in pr…

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