Religion Dispatches
…5 percent of all intended pregnancies every year, preventing abortion. The other 95 percent of unintended pregnancies happen to those who don’t use contraception, or use it incorrectly, the Institute said….
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…e attention because of their notoriety within evangelical circles, and because their use of the term and involvement in deconstruction-oriented communities is legitimate. But here’s what David Jeremiah misses: It isn’t just well-known figures with professional histories in the evangelical entertainment industries or ministries who are ‘falling away.’ It’s tens of thousands of ordinary people, in all walks of life, who repudiate his version of the…
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…nd I know there’s no way roles aren’t eventually going to be reversed. Because the world is changing, and because we watched the trailer. (It popped up before 50 Shades of Grey, aka “Shari’ah in the Bedroom.”) When Fine is killed at the hands of the dastardly, and Bulgarian, Rayna Boyanov (played by a fantastic Rose Byrne), the CIA doesn’t just lose a great agent. Because Boyanov has the identities of all other CIA agents, which means no one can s…
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…ly polite if you think about it. People are intimidated. But let us not excuse them their intimidation, because there is also an insidious status of Islam-hating these days—I do not wish to make the mistake of identifying it as “Islamophobia.” To use the suffix “-phobia” puts all the blame on Muslims for igniting fear, and ignores the power imbalance against Muslims; especially in Europe and North America. It is not fear that motivates some of the…
Read More…s forced anal examinations The UN Committee Against Torture “condemned the use of forced anal examinations as an attempt to find ‘proof’ against people accused of homosexual conduct,” reported Human Rights Watch. The committee evaluates countries’ compliance with the Convention on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment. Uganda: New documents released in SMUG lawsuit against Scott Lively Sexual Minorities Uganda is represented by the Ce…
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…o. What is more, one feature of ritual is that the “message” is not self encoded. That is why I keep making a distinction between this and what we mostly understand when we use the word prayer in English. Prayer is all about our immediate status. “Help me get through this”, “Give me an A on the exam”, “make her heart turn to love me”, “Grant me a successful hajj.” etc. Worship responds to a higher level in fact, the highest level of formality. Eve…
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…o. Like any strategist, I’m eager to learn whatever I can from my foes and use it against them. For that purpose, The Righteous Mind turns out to be useful. Haidt’s primary point is actually a good one: people on all sides of the political debate ought to listen more carefully, and try harder to understand one another. He correctly identifies a cardinal sin of so many liberals and lefties: failing to give conservatives an honest hearing. But it’s…
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…that cover gender and sex, when women’s voices are given more airtime because those are topics that “concern women,” and yet survivors of abuse are not centered in these discussions. Episode Six—”The Brand”—directly follows the episode that tackles Driscoll’s teachings on sex, but there’s no segue into a discussion of how sex was used as a tool of branding, commodified and packaged to accrue publicity and men’s service to the church. Instead, Cos…
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…rvative and conspiracy-loving aunt. Silly and misguided, perhaps, but, because of her advanced age, becoming rapidly irrelevant, and so ultimately harmless and loveable (at least if she’s nice to people and doesn’t vote). Perhaps, then, their attitude towards Sister Cindy reflects shifting attitudes about religion itself. But if so, what does this mean for religion? Jed and Cindy portray the mocking responses of their audiences in the terms of spi…
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…ministry: I check in everywhere I go… If I can interact with somebody because they know where I am, or they can find me more easily because I’m on Twitter or where I check in on Foursquare, then I think I need to do that simply because it allows me to be more accessible to everyone else who might be looking for me or ask me something. As the reality of part-time, bi-vocational, and otherwise extra-congregational lay and ordained ministry continue…
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