Religion Dispatches
…don’t need the headaches that come with that much “success” in the church business. Jesus counted success differently than we do these days. He didn’t build a big church, didn’t send letters to his followers asking for donations, didn’t seek to give high profile prayers. He simply went about the business of helping people. He didn’t seek acclaim or write any best- selling books. He simply went to where the hurting people were and healed them. His…
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…onization soars, remaining relatively high right through the 1960s; 7. Big business pushes back hard, flouting labor laws and hiring union-busting consultants to achieve “competitiveness” and “flexibility” during the 1970s and 1980s; business easily breaks the backs of the industrial unions by exercising the option to move production overseas; 8. With the labor movement now all but destroyed, we are back to servile acceptance of unfair, unjust pra…
Read More…d is one of the most ancient pitfalls of faith. The Didache, one of the earliest ecclesiastical texts, warns the first Christian communities against itinerant prophets who demand money in the name of the Holy Spirit. The Church of Scientology has built a business and a religion on that kind entrepreneurial charlatanism. But their business model requires good PR, and good PR requires a tight lock on secrets. At the moment, Scientology doesn’t have…
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…oblem that to many is even exacerbated because the church wants to just do Business As Usual. I know plenty of LDS people who are in no mood to do Business As Usual. Even in the heart of institutional Mormonism, many LDS people remain conflicted, sensitive, unclear, ambivalent, and tender about why the Church became so involved in the Proposition 8 campaign; what was lost, what was gained, and what purposes it will ultimately serve. In tenderness,…
Read More…that they want to put the “big” (three percent!) abortion provider out of business. (Has anyone pointed out that Planned Parenthood is one of the primary providers of abortion services because the intimidation of and restrictive legislation promoted by anti-choice activists have driven other providers out of business?) But the Republicans refuse to admit the clear evidence: that not a single dollar of federal money pays for anyone’s abortion, and…
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…To his shock, it wasn’t. Kinzer observed that the “social conservative-Big Business coalition politics was frayed to the breaking point.” He goes on: It was disorienting. I had conversations with people I felt I had carried a lot of water for and considered friends at a deep political level, who, in very public, very aggressive ways, were trying to undermine some fairly benign religious liberty protections. Kinzer is served up as an example of the…
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…ther Muslim, African American, female, etc.—democracy is an all or nothing business. You fight for everyone’s rights (and the operative word here is “fight”), or you get none for yourself. Democracy isn’t a buffet. You can’t pick and choose which civil liberties apply to which people. Either we are all equal, or the whole thing is just a sham. We Muslims are already a deeply marginalized people in mainstream American culture. More than half of Ame…
Read More…t read this story,” he explains, “it was obvious to me that this was about business. It was about leadership.” Later, Colonna, who works as a coach for entrepreneurs, recasts the Buddha as the ultimate coach for (you guessed it) entrepreneurs: To me dharma teaches us to live in that gap of hope without attachment. To believe that you can take on an entrenched institution or power structure, knowing that 99.99% of the enterprises fail and you get u…
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…instill confidence. Young people see other, surer paths to upward mobility—business, finance, law—avenues more financially promising and that appear to be comparatively less clogged with contentious personalities. But for those who discern the call to preach the gospel, even for those of us who pursue ordination later in our careers, such concerns fade to insignificance. We approach our calling with energy, enthusiasm and idealism—and then run int…
Read More…son at the head of the table, said he had read books and relied on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of pro…
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