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Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

By Chip Berlet

…in what has become an acrimonious debate. Chalk it up to retrograde TMS (Testosterone Madness Syndrome), the root cause of most Internet flame wars. There is unfinished business on this topic for the religious left, however, and it needs to be explored before we reach out to find common ground with opponents of abortion. The debate on the religious left needs to be shifted to focus on simple strategic questions: What will move our society toward i…

Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011

By Lauri Lebo

…n Tennessee, which says that educators may not be prohibited from “helping students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academi…

How an 1843 Revelation on Polygamy Poses a Serious Challenge to Modern Mormonism

By Benjamin E. Park

…t to purge the state of polygamists, adopting, as noted above, America’s most strident anti-polygamy policies. Part of that drive was due to the state constitution’s explicit criminalization of polygamy. But another part, and perhaps a major driver within the LDS portion of the agitation, is modern Mormonism’s continued anxiety over the practice itself. Though an official manifesto publicly ended the practice of plural marriage in 1890, and a seco…

“Paleo” is More Than a Fad Diet: Boyd Eaton’s Plan to Return to Eden

By Michael Schulson

…billion living an okay life? Well, that’s the greatest good for the greatest number—the argument that you’re making. If you want a livable lifestyle for the greatest number, then living at a minimal level with 12 billion people would be better. If you want people living the very best possible lifestyle, then 100 million people would be better. If you stop thinking about only human beings, but thinking about all the rest of the living organisms on…

Busy Days For ‘eBay of Prophecy’

By Bill Berkowitz

…larization of Christmas to end.” CitizenLink.com recently reported that “Last Christmas, Stuart Shepard introduced a brand-new holiday in his Stoplight® video commentary. More than 2.2 million people around the world watched ‘Merry Tossmas,’ in which retailers were asked to acknowledge the name of the holiday that falls on Dec. 25. Otherwise, their catalogs met an unfortunate end.” Focus on the Family would like your family to add another this tra…

Six Overlooked Gems from the Future of World Religions Report

By Timothy King

…inating trend in the world of religion. While small in total number, the fastest growing religious population in North America today (after Islam) is NOT the “nones” It’s “other religion,” a category that includes anything from Baha’i and Taosim to Wicca and Zoroastrianism. Part of the growth in “other religion” segment is being fueled by religion-switching. Nearly 2 million people are expected to be added to the “other religion” category over the…

Offer to Lesbian Scholar Rescinded by Jesuit School

By Mary E. Hunt

…esident Wild had been pressured by the local ordinary, Archbishop Jerome Listecki. Listecki admitted that he had expressed his “concerns” but emphasized that Marquette is independent of the Archdiocese and could well make its own decision. That translates to the need to buckle under to his “concerns” or face sanctions from higher up the Roman ecclesial food chain. It is also suspected that some deep-pocketed donors probably made their “concerns” k…

The Fundamental(ist) Optimist President

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ng another tumble this morning, reaching depths not imagined even by the most stalwart of doomsayers, the US President delivered a short morning address (tellingly, when no one would really be paying attention, as Wall Street brokers scurrying on the floor of the Exchange clearly were not), in which he insisted that: 1) “we’re all in this together”; and 2) that he’s still “fundamentally optimistic.” And why not? The one thing the ideologue and the…

Rick Warren and The (Necessary) Narcissism of Faith

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ural, *our* God, that nags. Does this “we” really include our Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Taoist, and Confucian fellow-citizens? Is the invocation of “God” without any qualifier already a violation of the unwritten prime directive of Inaugural Address? If so, then Rick Warren came intending to rewrite that unwritten rule, and he came to set the record straight. His prayer concluded in unapologetically and exclusively Christian, terms: “I humbly…

Archbishop Drops the Girl Scouts Amid Alarmist Rhetoric and Fake Accusations

By Patricia Miller

…decide the fate of Girl Scout troops in their dioceses. The Archdiocese of St. Louis has urged parishes to drop the Girl Scouts and individual churches have dropped the organization, but Naumann, who claims the diocese has spent “hundreds of hours researching concerns” about the Girl Scouts, is the first Catholic prelate to mandate the removal of the Girl Scouts from all Catholic parishes in a diocese. But by buying into the alarmist rhetoric of o…