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Will the Religious Side with Workers?

…ress is anyone’s guess. I still take the Gramscian position toward social change: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. And I never cease to hope for new light and new energy from the heart of faith around the rights and dignity of working people….

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Double Helix: Science & Religion as Cultural Kindling; A Response to The New Republic

…umans or Earth as in any way unique or inevitable. Coyne does set off in a new and productive direction when he calls out many of those attempting the Great Reconciliation who blame the ‘new atheists’ for cultural discord. The line is that all these atheist scientists, Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion (2006) being the epitome, are inciting the masses by heaping abuse on religion and proclaiming the superiority of scientific reason. Bu…

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It’s Not a Tea Party, Silly, It’s a Rebellion

…, but not without a fight. Outraged citizens burned copies of the proposed new Constitution in organized street protests from New York to South Carolina. But eventually the thing was ratified, and a very different situation emerged, one in which US citizens could be taxed, but only by a federal government in which each of them had representation (and thus a theoretical stake), especially in the legislative branch, which was given the authority to…

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A Dismayed Democrat Reads the Bible

…er 14 of 27 documents. When the book of Revelation comes at the end of the New Testament, it makes the whole of the New Testament sound as if we’re still looking forward to the second coming of Jesus and what is popularly called ‘the end of the world.’ When the book of Revelation appears more or less in the middle, we see it, hear it and understand it as a document produced in a particular time and place that tells us about what that Christ commun…

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The ‘Have More Children and Disciple Them Like Crazy’ Culture War Strategy is Neither New Nor Responsible

…their childhood. And the culture war retains its warriors. Kevin DeYoung’s new culture war strategy isn’t new, but it is effective. However, winning this war means everybody loses. A healthy and vibrant society doesn’t advance itself through the imposition of sectarian interests, but through meaningful engagement with a plurality of cultures and ideas. Rather than catechize children to win culture wars, let’s raise them with values of respect and…

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Is the Metaverse the Hero We Need to Rescue Us From Suffering and Enchant the World?

…For example, the artist Michael Takeo Magruder offers an experience of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21) in one of his VR projects, aptly named “A New Jerusalem.” Representing transcendent states—whether in places like heaven or conditions like bliss—has challenged artists for centuries. In the 21st century, look for an expanding array of attempts to use the metaverse to provide a glimpse of transcendent realities (through an Oculus darkly?). Whil…

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Goodbye, (Mythic) Columbus

…us (RIP) said nothing about new ideas or worlds within. It was all about a new land, a new world defined strictly geographically. As long as the myth was vibrant, it assured Americans that they needed no sophisticated concepts. The land of the United States itself (which became, in the U.S. version of the myth, synonymous with the “America” Columbus “discovered”) would be the paradise Columbus sought. It would exude all of his mythic qualities: co…

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New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

…ience of hadith collection. The Muslims who collected sayings of Muhammad knew that people were making things up and created checks and the best methodology that they could at the time to stop it. Modern scholars are revisiting the existing corpus with new tools and methods.  Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus. Stumped by this one. No idea what it refers to. How the oldest records referring to a…

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End-of-Life Lessons from The Walking Dead

…t list states where aid in dying legislation has recently been introduced (New Mexico, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Hawaii) and states where it is already legal (Oregon since 1994 and Washington since 2008) and you’re likely to conclude that dead isn’t what it used to be. And you’d be right. Dead used to mean three things: you weren’t breathing, your heart wasn’t beating, and your brain wasn’t working. But in the 1970s, respirators and de…

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Welcome to the (New) Gilded Age: Supreme Court Delivers the Goods to Corporations

…of the House. It didn’t help Blaine’s cause when one of his supporters, a New York clergyman, declared that the Republican Party represented the country’s last defense against “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Both prairie populism and urban populism surged on into the 1890s, although the two never managed to combine effectively and both were marred and hobbled by the deep-seated racism of white populists. Significantly, it was South Carolina popul…

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