Religion Dispatches
…that are difficult to find in other foods. I see this analogy failing in a number of important ways, not least in the way it suggests that the two parties involved are, first, a large institution doing charity work; and, second, the government—which may or may not be funding the Jain institution; Boudway doesn’t say—which imposes rules upon it. That’s far simpler than the situation we have for health care in the United States. On the healthcare in…
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…ptight liberals should just lighten up. Meanwhile, he was laughing all the way to the bank, and all the way to a position of tremendous political power. When talking on June 14, 2016, about the mass murder at an Orlando night club committed by an American-born Muslim, Limbaugh went after Obama in similar terms, saying he was always “really, really bothered out there about offending Islamists,” yet did “not seem concerned about Christianity. He is…
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…in that book was to wake people up to the fact that we’ve got this strong way of looking at human history—and to see both its goods and the way in which it can also be incredibly demonic. To work within those two poles without become dualists is our challenge. I know people on the left who are very dualistic, except in reverse—anything the right does can’t be good, etc. I think that the trick is critical consciousness. So, I wrote the book to rai…
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…doesn’t think he’s the world’s best actor. We all craved his approval that way, and now that he’s dead the only way you can get his it is by doing exactly what he wrote—or what Miscavige says. What made Hubbard so compelling? He was a charmer. All you wanted from him was a smile. He was magnetic. Some people have that ability to charm people to protect themselves. He would stare into your eyes whenever you were talking to him, gaze at you like a c…
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…faith in this way, because people expect them to talk about faith in this way, because they talk about faith in this way. More to the point, Democrats talk about faith in this way because they think they have to talk about faith in this way, because the description has now become reality, and if you’re a liberal Christian who’s not a Matthew 25 believer, what kind of faith do you have, anyway? Even worse, it creates the expectation that candidate…
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…have many components working together. Each family contributes in its own way to a community and the ways in which those communities may flourish vary. Thus, there are many kinds of thriving communities that make up a strong America. No matter what the community, however, the key has always been for individuals and individual families to stand together and look out for the well-being of one other. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote famously of Americ…
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…ivity without engagement in those important issues, that’s like moving sideways rather than forward. More positively, I’m fascinated by the ways that many spiritual-but-not-religious people self-organize to try to make a positive difference. I would hope that forward-leaning faith leaders could join together with these folks, and they could work together for the common good increasingly in the years ahead. Because in the end, the problem with orga…
Read More…in this election. I returned to the birthplace of my family to help in any way I could. I feel proud to be Irish in a new way today after the people of Ireland declared that one can be Irish and gay and recognized in loving same-sex relationships. Thank you, Ireland, for voting for another step toward universal human rights for all. James Norman, a gay man in Australia, wrote in the Guardian that before the Irish vote he had been ambivalent on the…
Read More…only man in this cluster was practically asleep on it. My plan was only to stay for zuhr prayer this day and when things quieted from the crowds rushing out, to have some lunch and return to my room. This plan would’ve worked too, except for the chance discovery of door number 89. *By the way, this short distance marked by green lights, to show where Hajar ran, nowadays they say this too is just for men! Women should not run. But then there is ano…
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…S military. The jihadi recruiting videos that are posted on the internet always begin in the same way—showing American military actions that kill and oppress Muslims. An end to those military actions will immediately undercut the support for the anti-American jihadi ideology. One proof of the effectiveness of a non-military response is the Awakening movement in al Anbar province of Iraq, a movement that arose in 2005 and then became associated wit…
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