Religion Dispatches
…llow Arabs, demonized and derided for years, such that their blood becomes cheap. This happens all too often with minorities; what is unique about the Arab world is the degree to which many dictatorships also oppress the majority. My point in that essay about Tunisia was that we in America and the West generally reflexively associate secularism with what is good and democratic, and conservatism (specifically, in Islam) with that which is antidemo…
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Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…
Read More…Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap….
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…hat. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that “some” adds up to a significant number. Not, at least, on the grounds of Novavax’s supposed selling point. To be fair, that’s not all there is to the piece. In fact, the question about Novavax’s allure reads like a wrapper for a bigger narrative about anti-vaxx activism merging with right-wing Christian nationalism. There’s an interesting story to be told there, and you should follow all the links in Jenk…
Read More…o doesn’t love skinks? 6. Willpower! Is magical! 7. Find an accountability partner! Every time you are tempted to sexually harass a stranger, call your partner and make a confession. 8. Wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you think about harassing a woman! Rubber bands are cheap – mere cents. Why, you could snap yourself with a rubber band more-or-less constantly for the next year, for a fraction of what any of those fancyp…
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…ngelicals, including Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore, the cheap grace to distance themselves from their Christian nationalist coreligionists without interrogating the authoritarian aspects of their own theology, you inevitably fail to fully account for the causes of January 6. Those causes very much include common and inherently authoritarian evangelical beliefs like the theology of male “headship” and female submission, of which…
Read More…ose reading of Scripture is cramped, at best. Seen in this context, it’s a cheap dodge for liberals within the UMC to blame churches and delegates from the Global South for the vote to retain (and even heighten) the denomination’s ban on all things queer. Yes, the UMC does have a much heavier Global South representation in its governance than any of the other “sisters”; fully 41% of the delegates in St. Louis represented churches outside of the Un…
Read More…dy and that is morally wrong.” But, using your wife’s death to score a few cheap political points against a group of people you hate isn’t “morally wrong”? But wait, there’s more! Garlow also uses his dead wife to point out just how fake the relationships between living, loving gay and lesbian partners really are. He talks about the delight he experienced being married to his wife, something gay and lesbian people certainly couldn’t have, right?…
Read More…of the jostle and the necessity of the inconvenience. But still, I would draw the line: jostle there, but not in the shops to buy cheap token souvenirs made in China….
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…he same Bible out of which my conservative brothers and sisters pull these cheap one-liners to control the conversation about reproductive health also shows us the life and ministry of Jesus—whom we all claim to follow. The Jesus of the Gospel always treated poor people and people in crisis with compassion, never judgement. I don’t understand how you can claim to model yourself on Jesus while seeking to constantly judge and shame and limit people….
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