Search for "마사지광고작업び〖텔레%</div><div class="

Manhattan Declaration Is The New Old Culture War

By Sarah Posner

…lions of Americans who lack it. That would mean that gay marriage laws get passed not only unchallenged by the so-called centrists but supported by them, so that LGBTQ people (God’s children?) are no longer relegated to second-class citizenship. Anything less than that from the prophets of the end of the culture wars means that they are fighting them, or at the very least throwing fuel on the fire, along with the culture warriors they claim to rej…

What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…rization of the biblical injunction that the truth will make you free, the class prejudices built in to blasphemy prosecutions in England, and the heroic nature of secular criticism. Most surprising, perhaps, for many, will be his explanation of the legal status of belief in Islam. Asad says that individual belief is understood in Muslim law to be fundamentally inscrutable and that its coercion is always thought to be inappropriate. What is of con…

Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence

By Michael Jerryson

…ous violence: Muslims against Buddhists. One day after teaching an English class for Buddhist novices at a monastery a young monk came over and pulled back the folds of his robe to reveal a Smith & Wesson. I later learned that he was a military monk—one of many covert, fully ordained soldiers placed in monasteries throughout Thailand. To these monks, peacemaking requires militancy. Since my initial realization in 2004, I began to look critically a…

Creationist-Leaning Texas Sets Textbook Agenda

By Lauri Lebo

…emental materials” to be used alongside textbooks in public school science class. Of course, the state is an old hand at such tactics. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment Act, which required creationism to be taught alongside evolution. I’m headed to Louisiana tomorrow. While I will be primarily searching for incredible food, wonderful music and one of those ubiquitous drive-thru daiquiri stands, I’ll also b…

Judging Pat Robertson’s Influence

By Sarah Posner

…he eyes of many people. Still, he remains a person of some influence, an individual who ran for president, whose words still garner attention, and whose views reflect a strand of thought within Christendom. Of course, conservatives see the PR disaster in not distancing themselves from Robertson — that’s why many of them have. Yet there isn’t, and probably couldn’t be, a push to drive Robertson off the airwaves. Robertson’s empire will soldier on i…

Freeman Dyson, American Heretic

By Michael J. Altman

If Scientists are the West’s last priestly class then Freeman Dyson might be our greatest heretic. Nicholas Dawidoff’s profile of the brilliant physicist in the New York Times Magazine illuminates a man who has always sought to subvert scientific consensus—most recently in denying the dangers of climate change and CO2 emissions. The story’s title, “The Civil Heretic,” signals the ghost of religion hanging in the background. It is the “secular rel…

Why David Brooks Doesn’t Get the Outrage Over AIG

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…s typology of number crunching versus psychology. The Washington political class has spent the past week going into made-for-TV hysterics over $165 million in A.I.G. bonuses. We’re in the middle of a multitrillion-dollar crisis, and our political masters—always willing to throw themselves into any issue that is understandable on cable television—have decided to risk destroying the entire bank-rescue plan because of bonuses that account for 0.001 p…

Louisiana Students Must Choose: Religion or Science

By Lauri Lebo

…issue when the board there tried to introduce creationism into its science classes. Today, as one of intelligent design movement’s most damning critics, a lot of people don’t like her very much, even though they must have to work pretty hard to come up with reasons to dislike her. As we drive, Forrest keeps up a running narrative of the history of her state. We visit the state capitol and stand on the spot where Huey Long was assassinated. She spe…

The Kids are Religious Right: Punk Rock & Pro-Life

By Justin Philpot

…dge is aimed at pro-life youth activists and serves as an affirmation of individual values, a way of identifying as pro-life to other youth, and as a statement of opposition to the culture at large. It reads: We are a loud and determined voice for Truth and Life in this culture of death. We stand on the truth of Jesus Christ whom all of our strength comes from. We stand for the protection of all human life from conception (fertilization) until nat…

McCain’s Prosperity Preacher

By Sarah Posner

…new age credos like the power of positive thinking, and attainable middle class prosperity of the post-World War II era, the Word of Faith movement took hold in the 1950s followed by a doctrinal merger with televangelist Oral Roberts’ seed-faith theology in the 1960s. With the explosion of religious broadcasting in the 1970s, the result today is seen not only in the preaching of Hagee and Parsley, but also in most of the country’s leading televan…