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Obama Inaugural Address Challenges Tea Party History

…the Republic included “as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free,” when the more common version these days calls on us to “live to make men free.”  Yet even with regard to the way military force has been central to what it means to be American, the president presented a new narrative, asserting that “peace and lasting security do not mean we are in a state of perpetual war.” One of the most important ways in which the tea party and…

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Olympic Ritual and Religion, Hosted by a Religion-less State

…rd where human rights are concerned, especially those rights regarding the free exercise of religious belief. Item Two: Beginning on Friday evening, 8/8/08, the same government in Beijing began hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, giving explicit voice to the implicit religious sentiments of those Games. Item Three: The most expensive ticket, and the hardest one to come by at the Modern Olympics, is a ticket to the Opening Ceremonies, where precisely n…

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Far-Right Evangelicals And The Campaign Against Obama

…ht are the ultimate camp followers. They’re latching onto government for a free ride while decrying it. They want to overthrow the present order from the inside in the name of God. The result is that there are two kinds of far-right evangelicals: the ones who make a public show of their animosity toward the president, accusing him of not being an American citizen, for example. They even say Obama has a secret plan to kill old people within his hea…

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Searching for Moral High Ground While Houston Drowns: A Perspective on the Lakewood Church Controversy

…istianity function so closely with some of the core American ideals around free-market capitalism, wealth and consumerism. Prosperity gospel, for instance, only makes logical sense in a system of free-market capitalism. Those core American ideals have come under assault in very public ways when measured against the yardstick of liberation theology and faith-based social justice initiatives. By Tuesday afternoon, August 29, news sources were report…

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‘Do You Want Columbia to be Cursed by God?’ — Alarming Exchanges in Congress and Beyond Highlight the Desperate Need for Religious Literacy

…itism, Islamophobia, (anti-)Zionism, and Israel (not to mention democracy, free speech, and open dialogue). These debates would be more fruitful if informed by the way scholars of religion approach their subject matter. As a starting point I’ve found Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy Project and its four principles (which also happen to be guiding principles of RD) to be helpful in the classroom: Devotional religious expression is disti…

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Searching in Vain for a “Pure” Elie Wiesel

…th leftist intellectuals who reject it. Perhaps another generation will be free enough to criticize Israel; I cannot. [Italics added.] Was this a betrayal of his other broadly humanist commitments? Absolutely. There is no reason why critics should not continue to take Wiesel to task for what he said about Palestinians, or why they should not point out how especially unprepared Wiesel was for the recent growth of Israeli racism. But if we have anyt…

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You Are More Than Your Brain: A Revolutionary Theory of Consciousness

…opnik has pointed out, is probably the latest version of this story—a hero freeing human beings from their roles as organic batteries cultivated to power a race of evil machines. There is a more frightening proposition: that other people are in fact shadows cast on the wall. How do we know others are not a dream? Even observable behavior is a poor indicator. Take the fact of Kismet, a robot engineered at MIT to imitate a range of human attitudes a…

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‘Manufactured’ Smear Campaign Attempts to Intimidate Church ‘Fasting From Whiteness’— It Didn’t Work

…nce of certain Ideas & Principles upon which this nation is built—Liberty, Freedom of Conscience, Equality.” Turning Point’s video suggests that the church’s program promotes “disunity” and “segregation.” But here too, there’s no evidence to support the claim, and plenty that refutes it. As Edgerton told the Chicago Sun Times, “You don’t fast from things that are despicable. … You don’t fast from things that are ugly,” he said. “You fast from thos…

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Capitalism and Christianity

…data: 50 percent of white evangelicals say they believe capitalism and the free market are at odds with Christian values. According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans. On first glance that seems difficult to accept given white evangelicals’ overwhelming electoral support for the Repu…

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Paranoia Over Foreigners in Egypt Eclipsed by Cooperation

…mmensely polite attitude of people searching those coming into Tahrir. The free teas that were spreading all around Tahrir, no doubt paid for through the charitable support of someone in the crowd, or donated by the tea-shop owner – its just another part of the Egypt I have always known. But the Egypt I have known would never have seen people feeling free to voice their criticisms of the president so strongly or openly – that type of attitude cert…

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