Religion Dispatches
…g you. Take someone along. Preferably your worst enemy. Spy is rated (R) for treasonous liberal revisionism. Good guys only kill bad guys, but bad guys mostly only kill bad guys, which makes it hard to know who’s with us and who’s against us….
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…ares the room, which has something of a free-for-all quality, to a Nazi rally. Really. Security is confused, because while the event has ceased to be the lecture it never got a chance to be, no clear red lines have been crossed. Or the College just doesn’t like Geller enough to intervene. 7:50 Geller retreats to a soundtrack of chanting students: ‘Don’t come back! Don’t come back!’ They’re beaming, exultant in their accomplishment, slapping each o…
Read More…marriages, and St. Matthews, a Catholic parish in Washington, which obviously does not. “You could have ministers who conduct real marriages that are civilly enforceable at the National Cathedral, but not at St. Matthews downtown, because that minister refuses to marry two men, and therefore, cannot be given the State power to make a real State marriage,” he argued. Justice Sonia Sotomayor jumped in, pointing out that in states that had anti-discr…
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…them to color what or how I reported. I covered Cardinal George as vigorously, fairly, and accurately as I could. But it didn’t mean I had to like him. At first I didn’t. But then I got to know him. Sure he could be acerbic, and even a bit imperious, but he was no misanthrope. One of the things I remember fondly about the cardinal was his huge, easy smile and and infectious laugh. It was that laugh—practically guileless, like that of a happy kid—t…
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…ulture war issues and towards questions of social justice (which are actually addressed directly by the gospels) Pope Francis has earned a reprieve for a Church still reeling from the horrors of sex abuse allegations and other scandals. Can we hope for a Vatican III to suggest more radical changes than last year’s Synod on the Family? Or will cardinals, threatened by the spectacle of this social media-savvy progressive-leaning Pope, double down an…
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…ronomers haven’t yet noticed. Neither idea is especially appealing, logically or theologically. But for Hagee that isn’t cause for concern. Science sounds authoritative; astronomy is science; therefore astronomical events have authority. QED. FBM treats Jews in much the same way that it treats the moon: as something distant, abstract, and faintly inscrutable, that can be used to confirm a fragile thesis. It takes a rather determined theology, or a…
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…China turns out to be more like Japan—a deeply secular nation that is likely to grow increasingly more so—the Christian population worldwide would dip slightly, to 30.9%. But if China is more like South Korea—another largely secular society but one that is seeing an increase in religious affiliation—then Christians would make up closer to 35.3% of the global village. What if everyone in China who is currently unaffiliated were to become a Christi…
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…before and it never gets old. But… we confess we’re starting to nurture a bit of a Susan Lucci complex — always a nominee, never (yet) a winner. In the past we’ve lost to much larger media outlets (such as the public network that rhymes with “Zee Bee Ess”) and this year are up against the likes of Krista Tippett’s “On Being” and others. So, here’s where you come in: We want (and need) your vote in the Webby’s People’s Voice contest. It only takes…
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…y not going to work.” But with churches, they’re already set up and hopefully mostly paid off and don’t have too many costs. So we create sustainable models for the income to balance out. If the costs going into it are really high, it’s pretty hard to achieve that with arts organizations and events when you’re charging ten bucks to get in. It’s really important that it be accessible. We’re not the model of a theater where we’re charging 50 bucks a…
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…me according to what has gone out of your mouth,” (Judges 11:36). A seemingly willing victim, she asks only that she be given two months to wander the mountains and mourn her virginity with other young women. We are told her father then “did with her according to the vow he had made.” Sound familiar? Stannis tries to elicit a similar sort of consent from his own adolescent daughter, but he withholds a crucial piece of information: namely, her immi…
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