Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet new promo code Kenya

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

Synod ‘Fight for Soul’ of Catholic Church, Flap On English Translation of Key Report; Anti-Gay Law Advances in Kyrgyzstan; Global LGBT Recap

…se people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities.” The new version asks if the church is “capable of providing for these people, guaranteeing … them … a place of fellowship in our communities.” The first version said homosexual unions can often constitute a “precious support in the life of the partners.” The new one says gay unions often constitute “valuable support in the life of these persons.” In nearly all cases, the first…

Read More

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…

Read More

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

…assignment for The Washington Post, a cover story for the magazine about a new African American synagogue in DC started in 2008 by Mother Dailey’s grandson, Eli Aronoff. (Aronoff claims no Ashkenazi ancestry despite his surname—his father was from rural South Carolina.) Neither my story nor the new congregation succeeded—the Post axed the story during a shakeup of the magazine’s editorial staff in 2009, and Aronoff’s congregation recently decided…

Read More

New Hampshire Cuts Off Funding for Contraceptives for Low-Income Women

…ed Parenthood continues to provide (privately-funded) abortion services in New Hampshire, even after it lost the state contract to provide contraception to low-income women. Here’s what the post says: Why does Planned Parenthood cut contraception and cancer screenings first? Answer: because it’s been all about abortion all along. Hooooookay. Let’s back up. Planned Parenthood of New Hampshire does more than one thing at once. It does one thing (pro…

Read More

Goliath the Israel Slayer: Why Max Blumenthal’s New Book is a Painful Read

…tive. He was a hopped-up, stoned version of Jon Stewart, who once told Fox News, which had charged that his news program was slanted: “but my show is on Comedy Central!” Thompson was able to awaken his readers to the absurdity of their lives by documenting the absurdity of his. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s comment to Dan Quayle in their vice presidential debate: Max Blumenthal is no Hunter Thompson. Blumenthal’s Goliath is not funny, nor is it ve…

Read More

Welcome to the Gayborhood: Jason Brown on This New Era

…from the show’s guests that reveal how their worldview has changed in this new era. In 2013, Jason Brown was a queer student at Biola University, a conservative evangelical college that prohibits “homosexual behavior.” For a time, he co-led an anonymous LGBTQ club called the Biola Queer Underground (now Biolans’ Equal Ground). Back then, Deborah interviewed him for her book Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women and Queer Christians Reclaimed…

Read More