Religion Dispatches
…, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bible Answer Man” Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute, tuning in like clockwork to his show weekdays 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Washington DC’s WAVA 105.1. Still, as much as I appreciated (and occasionally even found inspiring) these programs’ message of sel…
Read More…ligious freedom. In the terms of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, these corporations are called “churches,” their “integrated auxiliaries,” and “conventions or associations of churches,” where churches are defined as a “subset of IRC 501(c)(3) organizations organized and operated for religious purposes.” Necessarily, such entities are artificial or fictive persons under the law, subjects capable of claiming rights and bearing respon…
Read More…it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, the idea, hang on, am I advising people to leave their church… yes!… If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.” And the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good responded. Beck needs to get out more. I don’t know about the Book of Mormon, but here are just a few of the Bible verses concerning the poor and believer’s…
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…e strings of his electric bass to bang out a rhythm that sounds like Morse code. When all twelve performers are on stage, the sounds that they make together are nothing less than astonishing. On top of it all rests the falsetto voice of the band’s vocalist, Jón Birgisson, who sings the lyrics with a keening wail: Bakvio sk´yjaból vaknar sól úr dvala Svalar sér vio kalda dropa regnsins leikur sér vio heita loga eldsins Byr til regnboga A rough tran…
Read More…s would be arrested and prosecuted. Lokodo said the parade was designed to promote homosexuality to young people. “We are aware that there are inducements, including money, being offered to young people to promote the practice,” he said. Lawyer Nicholas Opiyo said he believed the minister was unaware that parade organizers had formally notified police of their intention to hold a public gathering. “In terms of the legal procedure, they ticked all…
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…This moved swiftly into the revision of Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code in 1935, which “would amount to a death sentence for gay men,” according to historian Andrea Carlo. The banning of books on the LGBTQIA+ experience and the closing of libraries; the legislation and platforms against transgender healthcare and LGBTQIA+ rights; these all draw from that playbook. All of these components–physical assaults, book banning, and legislation–are…
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…calculated pi long enough, you’d eventually find the works of Shakespeare coded in 1’s and 0’s. “Somewhere inside the digits of pi is a representation for all of us — the atomic coordinates of all our atoms, our genetic code, a coding of our motions and all our thoughts through time, all our memories…. Given this fact, all of us are alive, and hopefully happy, in pi. Pi makes us live forever. We all lead virtual lives in pi. We are immortal,” Pic…
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…—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The kabbalistic literature now so popular in modern Israel is in many ways worse. We have evidence that in the heyday of Safed in the sixteenth century a “council for rectifying sins” (va’ad le tikun avonot) was established to seek out and corporally punish those who wer…
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…one has parents worth invoking. And every little step and turn of the talk promotes an etiquette that values open doors and natural achievement. The bride’s genealogy, for example, always precedes the groom’s. The undergraduate degree is one you “graduated from” whereas the graduate degree is one you “received.” Flourishes of detail are unnecessary (the names speak for themselves) unless they don’t. Thus, the employer of one subject is “CytImmune…
Read More…wants to make us slaves again. Sigh. Palin’s over the top proclamation was coded in one of her specialty word salads that few can translate. Since I have been called the Palin Whisperer by one of my Twitter followers, let me give you the short version: Obama wants to make white people slaves!!!! In case you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the transcript: PALIN: Well, what we can glean from this is an understanding of why we are all on the ro…
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