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Condemnation, Condolences in Wake of Orlando Massacre and More

…tiative, and this feeling increases as its contents are better known. For example, exercising their rights as citizens, Christians of different denominations – Catholic, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals, who represent the majority of the voters – expressed in different ways their rejection of the amendment. They aren’t the only ones protesting, even though they’re the ones the media has paid most attention to, partially to disqualify them for…

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Jack Ryan Uses Bible to Exonerate Wall Street, CIA

…and nationalism, dynamics I discuss in depth in my book, The Babylon Complex (Oxford University Press, 2014). A reboot of the older Jack Ryan series—based on Tom Clancy novels like Hunt for Red October—Shadow Recruit uses an all new screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp. Still, the film is highly reminiscent of the earlier series’ conservative patriotism, and Clancy’s avowed “God and country and family” Catholicism. As the story goes, Jack Ryan…

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“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other

…ch people are free to practice their own religion to the maximum possible extent,” explained Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University and the author of Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding said that liberty suggests a “defensive response.” “I think you could say we are all free, but what does free mean? It’s such a genera…

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There’s Nothing Wrong with ‘Prayer’; But There’s Every Reason to be Skeptical of Pence’s Coronavirus Prayer Circle

…s it was? Or that words like “regular,” “real,” and “normal,” in this context are often code for “conservative white Christians”? Might Merritt have devoted a thought or two to the possibility that American criticism of “thoughts and prayers” responses to real-world problems have everything to do with the fact that right-wing Christians—white evangelicals above all—constitute the one demographic that stands in the way of us seriously addressing ou…

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‘Religious Freedom’ for Atheists

…As the Indonesian activist Karl Karnadi points out, the persecution of Alexander Aan comes in the context of broader trends of “increasing religious intolerance in Indonesia which has victimized minority Ahmadiyya Muslims, Shia, Christians, Buddhists.” Indonesia’s Minister of Religious Affairs has recently called Shia Islam a “heresy” and publicly backed provincial bans on the Ahmadiyya, who consider themselves Muslims but differ from mainstream…

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Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

…-century England, toward the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. An examination—admittedly not systematic enough—regarding the relationship between these ideas and the emergence of Zionism suggests only a very marginal and indirect influence.’’ Other scholars, myself among them, have found a more direct and powerful connection between Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism. As historian of ideas Richard Popkin noted in the early 1990s, ‘‘Much…

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Racial Justice and Queer Masculinity: The Gospel of Frank Ocean

…ese kinds of passages. In so doing, an even greater chasm has been created between Jewish and Christian theological expression. Christians who connect the Good News with God being in Jesus need to set their gaze upon the embarrassing, naked weakness that haunts his final words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I’m convinced the Good News, in our current context, has no connection to truisms like “God is mighty,” or “God is in control.” J….

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Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

…eve in, it’s not always clear what we should believe in. Granted, not all experience the West as disenchanted, but experiences of suffering and despair (addiction being one of many) can make a person sense acutely that they lack meaning in their life. AA members often say that they came to the program to stop drinking, but that they stayed to grow spiritually. Whether we read this as evidence of cultish brainwashing or a symptom of our disenchante…

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A Real-Life Truman Show?

…or their families, but the group of eight- and ten-year-olds sat silently except for the sound of them slurping from their juice boxes. Finally, the woman gave up and began the prayer herself. She thanked God for all his blessings. She made no mention of the oil spill disaster or of the people whose lives had been destroyed by it. Rather, she asked God to continue to bestow his bountiful blessings on the children and their families. Later, I learn…

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Talmud v. Torture: The Jewish Case Against “Enhanced Interrogation”

…e 1999 ruling left room for continued abuse of Palestinian detainees. The exigencies of survival, whether real or perceived, have trumped tselem elhoim in the hearts and minds of many. Though a few Jewish organizations have welcomed the release of the “torture memos” as a positive step forward, many others have kept silent, perhaps still unable to decouple concerns for Israel’s security from the “war on terror” mentality cultivated over the past e…

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