Religion Dispatches
…rning the end of the world.” In addition to Rapture Ready Wallpaper, and a number of ads for books (Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrewby Haim Shore), a very scary graphic novel (Armageddon Now: World War III), videos (“Rapture—End Times”), and dating aids (“Meet Christian Singles”—obviously something that should be done sooner than later), RaptureReady.com’s front page features a slew of bad-news articles with headlines that almost m…
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…PA’s Clean Power Plan, a key component of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, aims to reduce pollution at power plants, the nation’s largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions, 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It is believed that this 30-percent reduction will provide $55 billion to $93 billion per year in public health and climate benefits. These benefits include avoiding a projected 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths, 140,000 asthma attacks…
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…internet as a result of the inexorable working out of Moore’s Law. As the number of transistors on a chip grew exponentially, computers became smaller, and then they became “personal,” and then they fit in our pockets as a phone. “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing,” at the Computer History Museum In this telling, the internet was not a unique “Columbus” event, but an evolution dependent on the shrinking size and growing capacity of co…
Read More…used to receive threats but in recent years they had grown to an enormous number. My public activities resulted in promises to hunt me down, beat me up, and kill me. Neo-Nazis, homophobes and pro-Putin agitators showered me with insults on social networks, harassed me on the phone and at events, and even complained to my place of work. On 24 August 2014, Ukrainian Independence Day, myself and some friends who were in a picket on Malaya Sadovaya s…
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…is “disgusting, it’s against every woman’s desire,” echoed a Project 2025 plan to use the Comstock Act, an obscure 19th century law which bans the sending of “obscene materials” via the post office to ban abortion nationwide. “It’s not hard to shut down,” she says, “this is on the agenda for a pro-life administration.” Lauding young women who stand up against “woke hook-up culture,” which she blamed for the decline in marriage rates, Talento decl…
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…onal ministers, associates in ministry, and deaconesses, and currently the number of women and men preparing for ministry in ELCA seminaries is roughly equal (Susan Candea, “Wisdom Has Blessed Us”). While there are certainly some in the ELCA who continue to oppose women’s ordination, those numbers are small and grow smaller with each passing year. The same, I suspect, will be the case for the issue of gay and lesbian ordination forty years from no…
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…for which no one claims public credit. After all, Timothy McVeigh did not plan to be caught. Only a series of coincidences led to his capture. But why would terrorists go to the trouble (for them) and the awful experience (for us) to commit a horrendous act of terrorism and not take credit for it? Wouldn’t they want everyone to know what cause was being promoted? Not necessarily. Anonymous terrorism is actually fairly common. In my own studies o…
Read More…lobal Islamic Ummah.” While Breivik wants to ban race-mixing and limit the number of non-Europeans in his future Europe, he is quite happy to offer assistance “to our Buddhist and Hindu brothers if they request our help against Jihadi attacks or campaigns.” In the end, as long as everyone stays within their own ethno-religious territory, all is well. Fences make good neighbors in the wake of the clash of civilizations. Breivik hoped conservatives…
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…professor of medical anthropology at Oregon State University. The growing number of women seeking a secular midwife has created a gap in care, however. In some areas the preponderance of Christian midwifery, in tandem with restrictive laws, can make it difficult for secular women to locate a well-matched midwife. Anna Waterland-Dykstra, a nurse and director of community options at the Spearfish Family Planning clinic of the South Dakota Departmen…
Read More…from electoral politics, as they could signal to candidates that a growing number of voters are interested in hearing them talk about their faith. While the number of Americans who believe it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs has remained steady since 2010—about 6-in-10, with even more significant majorities among Protestants and Catholics—this poll shows a growing number of Americans who want to hear candidates…
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