Religion Dispatches
…offers violence, fear, and an Obama-like Antichrist Jesus Goes to the Dark Carnival: Hell House Gets a Makeover W. SCOTT POOLE A demon guides you through the shadows. The bodies of teenagers are strewn about like broken dolls in the mangled remains of a car, bottles of Jim Beam tellingly scattered about the wreckage… All Candy, No Jesus: Halloween in America MARY VALLE So where does one draw the line between “fun” and “evil?” A Rationalist’s Ghos…
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…ed mother knits him for Christmas, only to watch his mother die in a fiery car crash hours later. This punishing sentimentality is a consistent feature of Mormon storytelling from Church-produced cinematic classics like Cipher in the Snow (1973) and The Mailbox (1977) to the New York Times-bestselling novel The Christmas Box (1995) by Mormon author Richard Paul Evans. Finally, Beck’s oft-ridiculed penchant for punctuating his tirades with tears is…
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…ng the Supreme Court as the last vestige of a check and balance to a clown car of a government, a government determined to see how far you can get if all you have is a gas pedal and a steering wheel which only turns to the right. The bill isn’t about Judaism at all, says Dahlia Scheinlin, but “is creating a false god, a Judaism that is primarily political, material, imposed, devoid of humanity or humility.” Jeffrey Salkin, an American rabbi, warns…
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…l family was, as Pally imagines it, available to “driv[e] the child to day care when the new mother’s car has a flat tire so that she can get to work and not lose her job”? Other examples similarly fail to withstand scrutiny. On the one hand, Pally maintains that the new evangelicals are mindful of the First Amendment’s protections of religion, citing their support for freedom of religious expression for Muslims. Yet she fails to mention other re…
Read More…eir hero: Ronald Reagan. I scanned FRC Action’s voter guides and vote scorecard. In the toolkit “Proposition 8: the Case for Traditional Marriage” from the American Family Association, I found all the information I needed to stop the tyranny of activist judges in California. From Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays I got a nice little dose of misinformation about sexual orientation and the “health risks associated with homosexuality” along wit…
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…. “I looked through other authors who shared my publisher and who had been carried, whose books had been carried in Christian bookstores, and these were guys and they had referenced testicles and penises—so it seemed like at least with this, there was a double standard,” says Evans. She doesn’t want to point to sexism to explain the disparity—the books might have been considered more literary, she adds. Andy Meisenheimer is a book editor who worke…
Read More…rs has employed Al Qaeda-type tactics, using improvised explosive devices, car bombs, and assassination to sow terror in Nigeria. The group has gunned down churchgoers, attacked mosques and set off bombs across the country. Last month it bombed a bus stop in the capital, Abuja, killing 71 people. A bloody government crackdown managed to keep Boko Haram quiescent until 2012, when the attacks began again. In May of 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan…
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…iberately limiting their role to the provision of materials for Mohamud to carry out his intended act. The undercover FBI agent repeatedly asked Mohamud whether or not this was what his heart told him to do: “This is your choice, it’s what in [sic] your heart, we can’t tell you what’s in your heart.” FBI Does Theology By repeatedly asking what was in his heart, the FBI seems to have not only sought to establish intent, but assumed that Muslim mili…
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…via legislation or government policy. Add to these “nones” the increasing number of Americans who do self-identify as religious but who decline to vote the way certain popinjay enforcers would have them vote—who vote instead on bread-and-butter issues—and you have a pretty significant sea-change from the last few election cycles. One can imagine the used-car business is looking better and better to the likes of Ralph Reed. 6. Righteously Minded N…
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…wever, depending on the type and length of the prayer. Shorter prayers are cheaper and prayers for financial help are sold at a discount “for obvious reasons.” It’s nice to have a pay to pray Web service so concerned about subscriber’s financial health! Unlike Tetzel, however, this service exists in a world of potential litigation. So for those wondering why they paid their money to pray for a new Ferrari and God reneged on the deal, you can’t bla…
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