Religion Dispatches
…like our readers to know about your book? If you buy the book, cut out the correct pages using the Fibonacci sequence, and lay them out on the floor in the shape of a pentagram, it will reveal a secret code allowing you to join the ranks of Illuminati and obtain untold riches and power. This is a very complicated procedure and you may have to buy several copies to get it right….
Read More
…eal of trust exists between us. Just as we do not plagiarize, we honor the code of privacy and do not make public that which was meant to remain private. For me, that trust was broken in the midst of this passionate debate in a way that tells me we have crossed a line. Writing a Facebook wall comment in response to a May 3rd debate between Gordis and Peter Beinart at Columbia University, I referred to Rabbi Gordis as a “tribal fascist.” The tribal…
Read More…from Wikipedia). New Testament scholars have noted that since The DaVinci Code became a cultural phenomenon, there’s been a surge of conspiratorial claims about Jesus, the early church, and the influence of Pagan mystery religions. Authors such as Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman have written with bewilderment at the revival of “mythicist” theories of Jesus and “nineteenth-century philosophical hokum” that was long ago dismissed by serious scholars wh…
Read More
…d landscape. As far as I can tell, Obama is accommodating the scaremongers today mainly because they have the inside muscle to force him to their table. He needs to make a show of engaging their concerns about a looming structural deficit. But Peterson’s insider muscle-flexing cannot fully account for Obama’s independent announcement that he will seek to halve the federal debt load (in relation to GDP) by 2013. Although the White House isn’t sayin…
Read More…ze. When Hurricane Katrina happened you stayed on vacation (I just learned today my tax money paid for you to spend one year, 1/8th!, of your presidency at your ranch in Texas) instead of getting to work. And then with black people floating on New Orleans’ streets you said you couldn’t wait to chill on the racist Trent Lott’s new porch. It made me wonder if Kanye West was right. Do you really care about black people (or poor people of any color)?…
Read More
…ience, Equality.” Turning Point’s video suggests that the church’s program promotes “disunity” and “segregation.” But here too, there’s no evidence to support the claim, and plenty that refutes it. As Edgerton told the Chicago Sun Times, “You don’t fast from things that are despicable. … You don’t fast from things that are ugly,” he said. “You fast from those things that do tug at your heart.” Edgerton told the paper that although they’re celebrat…
Read More
…hing the sins of a lost city, some prescriptions in the Israelite holiness code, and the Apostle Paul on the consequences of pagan idolatry. Or so the passages read to me.) Calling out the numbers is not meant to start a conversation about what these biblical passages might mean—or about how different Christian communities have decided to determine the applied meaning of any verse in their version of the Bible. The verses are often cited in church…
Read More
…traditional marriage. It was only in 2000 that the discriminatory ban on ‘promoting’ homosexuality was lifted. Since 2004, Cyprus has implemented an anti-discrimination law (Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation Law 2004) that explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment. In 2013, the penal code was amended to include sexual orientation and gender identity thus criminalising all discrimination against…
Read More
…e. I have not been able to find reference to them in the criminal or civil code of Illinois, where the movie is set. I did learn that many EMTs in Chicago are employed by private companies, in which case such an employee would not be violating the establishment clause by proselytizing.) This is the movie’s big theological problem: a firm certainty that if it seems Christian to you, it probably is Christian, and is therefore a good thing in exactly…
Read More…, when a federal judge in Wisconsin found the relevant portions of the tax code to be unconstitutional, but the three judges on the appellate panel did not tip their hand, although they showed few outward signs that they agreed. The regulation at issue is more than sixty years old, enacted in the 1950s to ensure that ministers at churches who could not afford to provide them with housing could nevertheless benefit from the same tax breaks as minis…
Read More