Religion Dispatches
…this year), Benedict prepared a statement on social networking platforms. Expressing again his deep anxiety about “authenticity” in the media age, Benedict warns that “the significance and effectiveness of the various forms of [online] expression appear to be determined more by their popularity than by their intrinsic importance and value.” One can imagine the pope wringing his hands in frustration at the lack of civility in online arguments about…
Read More…there was a fight, but SB-1433 was never heard, and now the deadline has expired. In the aftermath, it seems to me that two factors contributed to the bill’s defeat: 1) Deep disagreement, between the personhood movement and more mainstream pro-life Oklahoma voters and legislators, on the advisability of amendments to the bill; and 2) The development of ill will between the personhood lobby and the Republican representatives. To recap: In the past…
Read More…its members brutally beaten, by members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. The klansmen had expected to find Michael Schwerner, a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality. Schwerner and two of his CORE colleagues—James Earle Chaney and Andrew Goodman—were actually in Ohio at the time, but heard of the Mt. Zion burning and came back to Mississippi to investigate. They were pulled over, arrested, released, tailed, and…
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…Burkhart had trouble finding doctors for her own clinic, when she started exploring the idea of reopening the practice several years ago. One in-state doctor expressed interest, but after his local hospital learned about it, Burkhart said, they threatened to terminate his contract. An anonymous doctor who will work at the clinic described to the LA Times how they’ve planned for her protection: flying in every other week, then being driven to the c…
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…ady lived. Yes, this is literary drama. Yet what we have in the Spiritual Exercises is a textual practice minus the page: it is the individual life that forms the plot in question, to be read and edited; places that require improvement are to be marked; and the text re-read, a small dot made here, a nota bene there—and this process to be repeated again and again. The Exercises demand that the Jesuit remain attentive to the way in which the compone…
Read More…e, the most important thing an individual can do. Let me just give you an example—this goes on year after year—Dr. Paul has been a consistent promoter of Second Amendment legislation. He’s already mentioned the United Nations, well, he’s got a bill to get us out of the United Nations, he doesn’t just talk about it. And the reason the Second Amendment folks are so interested in that is because the UN right now, under Hillary Clinton, the State Depa…
Read More…smatic persons will never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to…
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…al narratives in service of the state can be). Thus we observe that later exegetes and jurists began to make frequent exceptions to the injunction against committing aggression contained in Qur’an 2:190 and preferred to understand the verse as mandating primarily non-combatant immunity without placing any restriction on the Muslim army’s ability to commence fighting. This progressive watering-down in later exegetical and legal literature of the ca…
Read More…nguish himself from his pal John McCain who seems willing to differentiate between extremist Muslims and the mainstream faithful. Those are important points, but they all overlook what is, perhaps, the most troubling aspect of this mini-scandal: it fits within a growing pattern of elite non-Muslims misappropriating Islamic phrases and insisting that the most extreme interpretations or uses are the correct ones. Think about the term “jihad.” It’s o…
Read More…oulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.” Let’s read between the lines here: Monk is, quite literally, the best example of discrimination against Christians in the military that the Liberty Institute could find. He was chos…
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