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Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…

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Joyless Primaries Grind On

…g, highly observant LDS father. My friend described a brief, tension-laden phone call between father and son, wedged into a few free minutes after a church meeting. “Now, I’m going to serve my family,” said the father, bringing the call to a close. “Because that’s what I do.” And Mitt Romney is going to serve his country. Because that’s what he does. Like it or not. That joyless put-your-shoulder-to-the-wheel tenacity is setting the tone for the G…

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Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

…l world have so many things that others don’t—refrigerators, televisions, iPhones—and that’s completely true, but what that misses is that those don’t provide meaning for you. Ironically, those things might communicate to people that the world is moving on without them. How does religion, as an “overarching system of meaning,” help the disenfranchised? I think that when somebody has a strong moral system of meaning, it’s easier to cope with setbac…

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Is Bart Stupak As Marginalized As He Claims?

…Griffith offers “the type of patriotic, faithful leadership we need in the United States Congress,” noting how comments he made squared with Baptist theology. Eleison, which is also in the business of distributing “the most popular pork skins in America,” also lists pro-Stupak Bobby Bright as a client. Bright, also of Alabama, was recently profiled in the Times, too, for voting more with Republicans than Democrats (including against the health car…

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‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

…lation of Haiti is somewhere around thirty percent. In Port-au-Prince that number jumps to almost forty percent. The majority of these churches are Pentecostal. These churches are overwhelmingly independent, indigenous Haitian entities, though some are linked to North American denominational Pentecostal churches. Haiti, along with Jamaica and Puerto Rico, is home to one of the fastest growing Pentecostal populations in the Caribbean. As I watch th…

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The Rundown Truth: Scientology Changes Strategy in War with Media

…ion about his bank account, credit cards, home address and social security number—was illegally retrieved, and that he was subjected to surveillance and phone-tapping.         The church, meanwhile, countered that Behar’s article was a slanderous, sensationalist attack on a legitimate religious organization and part of a much longer history of misunderstanding and persecution that this religious minority has faced since its inception. In keeping w…

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Tea Party 2.0, Ready For Post-Election Launch

…hey distributed “6 million voter guides, 8 million mail pieces, 15 million phone calls, 500,000 doors knocked on by volunteers, and radio advertising covering 56 congressional districts and 22 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races,” they are now (apparently as I write this) surveying voters to learn “who went to the polls and why.” Instructive for those of us who follow the influence of the religious right on the tea party movement (arguing that it’…

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Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

…hat objective? No agreement there at all. I was powerfully reminded of the United Church of Christ Synod last July in Cleveland, where a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things…

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Mel Gibson’s ‘To-Do’ List

…Polish tinfoil hat so can wear it to Restoring Honor Rally 7. Find E.T. 8. Phone home Sarah Palin 1. Conference call with Smokey the Bear to map out guerrilla grizzly action plan 2. Primp for photo shoot with Today’s Christian Woman 3. Order camouflage Bible 4. Call Pat Robertson for spiritual guidance 5. Put hubbie on short leash 6. See if can find any prayer warriors willing to go all biblical on Levi 7. Send Rush a belated wedding gift Mel Gibs…

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