Religion Dispatches
…y surrounding Warren’s invitation to pray at Obama’s inauguration, the web site at his Saddleback Church has been scrubbed of previous mentions that gay and lesbian people who are unwilling to “repent” of the “lifestyle” of homosexuality would not be able to join the church. (Here is a cached version of the scrubbed page.) A new page, however, repeats the same offensive anti-gay theology, comparing the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians to al…
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…linics on the Eastern seaboard. Bray published a newsletter and then a Web site for his Christian anti-abortion movement, and published a book theologically justifying violence against abortion service providers, A Time to Kill. He is also alleged to be the author of the Army of God manual that provides details on how to conduct terrorist acts against abortion-related clinics. Recently Bray has publicly defended Paul Roeder, the Wichita assassin,…
Read More…wins the office of Vice President of the United States.” Romney’s campaign site claims he is “pro-life:” Mitt believes that life begins at conception and wishes that the laws of our nation reflected that view. But while the nation remains so divided, he believes that the right next step is for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade – a case of blatant judicial activism that took a decision that should be left to the people and placed it in the…
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…despite abundant research demonstrating that secular societies are the opposite of the hedonistic dens of crime and despair that some believers suggest a godless society would become. Christine Vigeant and Sarah Paquette, both former students of Boghossian, are the managers of Atheos. “We aren’t interested in making atheists. We are interested in making people reason more effectively, to make their arguments based on reason,” Vigeant told me. She…
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…s ministry under the “Evangelical” banner of the religion and spirituality site Patheos. At Mars Hill, Driscoll bullied staff and preached a misogynistic doctrine while training men and planting churches with the blessing of Keller and to the benefit of The Gospel Coalition (TGC), which Keller co-founded in 2005 with Driscoll as a Council member. Keller, D. A. Carson, John Piper, and other Reformed TGC leaders not only profited from Driscoll’s pug…
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…which troubled me,” he tells us, when he comes finally to the Alexandrian site of Taxila. This was in 1955. Ever an astute reader of the visual (he published a lovely little book on modern art entitled Look, Listen, Read in 1993), Lévi-Strauss was acutely moved by the Taj Mahal, seeing it as an enriching symbol of what he always dreamed: an authentic blending of Self and Other, in this case the rich aesthetic possibilities opened up by a more cos…
Read More…e doubt about the validity of evolution. Last week, according to FTE’s web site, it sent a letter to the state education agency, saying now that it would not be submitting any materials. As I wrote last week, FTE is the same publisher who wrote Of Pandas and People, the intelligent design textbook that was so famously exposed as rehashed creationist literature during the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover. The Board of Education will review materials su…
Read More…ted limbs inspired numerous stories, games, and videos that appeared on websites like Creepypasta. In an NPR interview Knudsen explained that he feels more like the creature’s manager than its creator. Soon online forums speculated that Slender Man had not been created by Knudsen, but was a real entity described by ancient cultures around the world. A recent book by Rev. Robin Swope (aka “The Paranormal Pastor”) asserts that Slender Man is an actu…
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…is that in twenty years, the closet will be a minor factor in politics. Outrage is now playing in selected cities. Check the Web site for additional information….
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…es. For instance, Lake Superior, a beautiful freshwater lake, was once the site of volcanic activity. I chose “rift” as the overarching metaphor because, while there’s a “before” and an “after,” leaving is never so simple as stepping over a line. In a geological rift, if you dig down deep enough on each side, the underlying materials are the same. In the same way, I feel like I can never completely escape my past. Learning to integrate it into my…
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