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Competitive Religious Philanthropy in the Wake of the Nepali Earthquake

…ury, Sri Lankan Buddhist reformers advocated for establishing Bodhigaya in India and Lumbini in Nepal as the Buddhist holy lands. As the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, Lumbini draws millions of pilgrims from around the world. Although none of the major holy sites in Lumbini were affected by the disaster, Sri Lanka’s generosity to Nepal could be understood as a means for Sri Lankan Buddhists to reasserts their own identity as the custodians and care…

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Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

….” Mendies would know. Born in Nepal to a Canadian mother (who had come to India as a Christian missionary in 1946) and an English-Burmese father who reared him as an evangelical Christian, in 1989 at the age of 34, Mendies was found guilty of “proselytizing” (in this case, placing bibles in Nepali hotel rooms) and spent six months in Kathmandu’s Central Jail, where he shared a cell with 17 other prisoners. Nepal’s intensely complicated political…

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Ask a Muslim: No, Dear Reader, Sex-Obsession Isn’t Confined to Muslim Nations

…s Muslims live in democracies. That includes Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Tunisia, Nigeria, etc., most of which are Muslim-majority. Are these perfect? Of course not. But they are democracies, and they aspire to democracy. Many of the countries that aren’t democracies have attempted democratic transitions, and have been actively or indirectly blocked by our country. Which is a democracy. So, why does our democrac…

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Predicting the Future of Religion: A Thought Experiment

…olars have often patronizingly collapsed the distinctions between African, Indian, Asian, and Pacific “indigenous beliefs.” How will westerners react when finally forced to confront these religious systems on their own terms? Stephen Prothero has pointed out that the traditional African religion of Yoruba is one of the world’s largest faiths and in his brilliant new book One Nation under Gods Peter Manseau has shown how the crucial role African re…

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I’m Too Sexy for My Church: Will a Thriving Singles Scene Renew American Catholicism?

…turns twenty next year, and evangelicals (for whom “young adult” is often code for “single”) have been known to seek out Bible studies with “cute” guys and girls. But in a time of declining demographics, and an upswing in online dating, the popularity of such parishes appears almost as an act of defiance. According to the Pew Research Center, the Catholic share of the population has been dropping steadily and getting older. To make matters worse,…

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Race, Reparations and the Search for Our Molecular Soul

…ience, and then you add to that DNA, which has been called things like the code of codes, the holy grail. We give it this kind of supernatural significance. So, I think it’s a combination of being a society that values data, being a society that equates progress with scientific development, and being a society that thinks that genetics—in part because DNA comes from you, from us, from we—is the ultimate information, the ultimate data. It’s like th…

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Conservative Catholic Elites Oppose Trump… as He Rides Catholic Vote to Victory in Michigan

…?) And who were similarly silent when the party tried to capitalize on the coded racism of the anti-Obama forces in 2012 or upend the Affordable Care Act, even though the Catholic Church has been advocating for universal health care since Model Ts were on the road. And it’s even funnier that those who helped put Bush and Cheney in office and watched as they led the nation into endless, unwinnable wars, and justified torture to prevent an ever-pres…

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How Fitbit Helps a Conservative Evangelical College Monitor Students’ Bodies For Christ

…iberal arts education and to have their behavior heavily regulated. Though codes of conduct may vary, evangelical universities like ORU, Liberty University, and Regent University all prohibit students from using illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, wearing provocative clothing, and engaging in premarital and homosexual sex. Bob Jones University actually prohibited interracial dating up until 2001. Oral Roberts believed that the survival of his own…

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GOP Debate Invokes Lincoln-Roosevelt Gospel, Candidates Take Turns Trampling It

…rly Fiorina said, government taxation and regulation crush growth. Her tax code is three pages long. In some contrast, T.R. thought government promotes growth by, among other things, regulating business. Cruz proposes a flat tax 10% so, he said, a millionaire doesn’t pay less than his secretary. Yet Lincoln found that his initial flat tax burdened the lower and middle classes far more than the rich, and he made it progressive. Cruz said his flat t…

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Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

…than thinking about the self as being a language—as being like a computer code that speaks—we think about the self as a cluster of forces. [These forces] make us what we are, and our decisions come from that rather than from this linguistic layer, which is actually constituted by that more fundamental cluster of forces. That’s what I see affect theory doing: upsetting this idea that human beings start with language and that we do what we do becau…

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