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Sex and the (Hipster) Church—Just a Gimmick?

…, and that God has been left out of the discussion for too long. By openly promoting sex—among married heterosexual couples—they are trying to distance themselves from the prudish attitudes commonly associated with conservative Christians and working to reach a generation of hip, culturally savvy, young evangelicals. (Although as a recent Religion News Service report indicates, more direct sex talk is a growing trend even among traditional evangel…

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“Religious Freedom” and the Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth

…e fine points of the debate about contraception and health insurance, this latest brouhaha raises a much bigger question that urgently needs public discussion but rarely gets enough: In a nation supposedly built on a wall of separation between religion and politics, why are so many voters so often moved by appeals to religion?  What’s in a Wall?      The best answer I know rests on the very word “wall” and all its metaphoric meanings, as explored…

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Is “Israel-Firster” Anti-Semitic?

On the latest episode of my Bloggingheads show, I discuss this with Sarah Wildman: In the rest of the program, we discuss the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel ad aimed at demonizing (and defunding) the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America; how issues relating to Israel-Palestine get discussed among American Jews; and Wildman’s excellent piece about the web magazine 972, published in the current issue of the Nat…

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It’s Barack v. the Bible, Says Barton

While the flap over Rush Limbaugh’s latest in a long line of offensive and hateful commentary continues on, other figures with (arguably) more longevity and influence continue their assault on Barack Obama and what they see as the decline of Christian America. To wit: the Texas intellectual entrepreneur David Barton, who provides the footnotes for the “war on religion” thesis that currently has captivated the right. Most recently, Barton’s post,…

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The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

…nd arguing that secular government cannot be limited.  Meanwhile, Barton’s latest text, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, sells briskly on Amazon, where you can conveniently purchase this latest text in a three-pack along with his works on separation of church and state (“a myth,” of course) and the Second Amendment (wherein the founders are invoked to oppose measures such as 1993’s Brady Bill)….

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Selling the Idea of a Christian Nation: David Barton’s Alternate Intellectual Universe

…supplies ready-made (if sometimes made-up) quotations ready for use in the latest public policy debate, whether they involve school prayer, abortion, the wonders of supply-side economics, the Defense of Marriage Act, or the capital gains tax. And Barton’s engagingly winsome personality, fully on display on The Daily Show, doesn’t hurt. He fires facts faster than they can be fought off, and he does so with a sort of Gomer Pyle sincerity that makes…

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Neither The Joker Nor Godlessness Drove Batman Shooting

…t fear God, they give themselves to evil. This was clearly the case in the latest mass murder. —Ray Comfort As many of us are struggling to find a reason or reasons for the Aurora, Colorado theater shootings in the early morning of Friday, July 20, there is no shortage of pundits offering their own explanations. Maybe the alleged shooter, James Holmes, was depressed after scoring low on exams in his PhD program at the University of Colorado. Or he…

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Masculinity and Mass Violence: When Will We Acknowledge the Smoking Gendered Pronoun Hiding in Plain Sight?

…t after James Holmes wounded 58 and killed 12 people at the opening of the latest Batman film at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, The Telegraph published a “history of mass shootings in the U.S. since Columbine”—a list of nearly 30 shooting sprees with lethal results. Ne’er-do-wells who merely wounded didn’t make the cut. Thus, not included on the list was a shooting spree in an Alabama bar with a multiple arson warm-up just two days earlier. Th…

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Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

…al statements that have inflamed anti-Muslim attitudes in Pennsylvania—his latest being that he plans to publicly flog a Koran on the Pennsylvania state capitol steps next month in protest of a state resolution to name 2012 the “Year of Religious Diversity.” There is No Such Thing as Islamophobia While these issues have been the subject of debate in segments of the atheist movement for some time, events this month have got me thinking about a new…

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St. Snooki: Our ‘Legit Old Lady’ of Renounced Sexuality

…. In so quickly casting off the mores of her immediate past, Snooki is the latest in a long line of irresponsible youths turned responsible adults, bringing to mind the young Henry V (a.k.a. “Prince Harry”) in Shakespeare’s cycle, who, when he is called to rule, immediately puts childish things away—even going so far as to hang one of his former compatriots when he is caught thieving. (One wonders if today’s Prince Harry will likewise renounce his…

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