Religion Dispatches
…atheism as the alternatives to fundamentalism. Neither does justice to the United States’ status as the world’s most influential nation. Instead, being progressive about religion should mean taking the logic of religious diversity to its ultimate conclusion and fostering the conditions to create multi-religious individuals. What’s involved? The United States is currently a multi-religious nation, and a nation that individuals of a variety of relig…
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…is gaining steam, from both sides. Barry Lynn, a minister ordained by the United Church of Christ, bristles whenever he applies for recertification to perform wedding ceremonies. “It offends me,” he said. “It’s not the state’s business to make me an officer in my ministerial capacity.” Lynn is also director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, an organization that has fought to remove monuments of the Ten Commandments from…
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…he pages of the Qur’an and command Osama bin Laden to wage war against the United States. No, the United States has worked for generations to control the Middle East, supporting the Shah, backing the Mujahideen, arming Saddam Hussein against Iran, and stationing thousands of soldiers in Saudi Arabia. This, as Obama well knows, is the primary (though certainly not the only) reason Al Qaeda has targeted the United States. The religious diatribes of…
Read More…g the globe. Nor has the UN in recent memory imposed its own leader on the United States over the popular will, as did the United States itself when it essentially overruled the world by ousting Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali over petty political grudges in 1997. If we must resort to conspiracy theories, let’s at least follow the money trail and look at who really wields power today. If a Satanic New World Order is indeed under way, surel…
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…ing of “writings, documents, and records … that reflect the history of the United States, including, but not limited to, (i) the preamble to the Constitution of this State; (ii) the Declaration of Independence; (iii) the United States Constitution; (iv) the Mayflower Compact… the National Motto” and more. The Oklahoma legislation, like the model bills it draws on, is a transparent effort to slip in overtly religious documents like the Ten Commandm…
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…undated America’s TV screens. At the time Wright was the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Obamas held membership, and many Americans were appalled at his excoriating remarks about the United States’ racist, nativist and imperialist acts against African, Asian and Indigenous peoples domestically and internationally. The optics were bad, but America’s perception was based on short cherry-picked video clips from two of…
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…Natalia Del Pino. They write about adoption discrimination at the Holston United Methodist Home for Children. The students invoked historical Methodist views on religious freedom and antisemitism against the Methodist Home’s action. Quoting from the Methodist “Book of Discipline” they write: “We condemn all overt and covert forms of religious intolerance, being especially sensitive to their expression in media stereotyping. We assert the right of…
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…el), a heroic Christian general lies to the president and secedes from the United States with several nuclear bases. The moral: Robertson may never again be a major politician, and when he sold out to Rupert Murdoch he gave up some of his power to shape the news. But he still helps form the imaginations of the students at his university and the viewers of his show. In this role he often channels their hopes and fears into imagining holy wars—scena…
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…the real journey is one of self-discovery. The religious landscape of the United States has profoundly changed since the genesis of the Grateful Dead 50 years ago, especially in terms of the dramatic rise of the number of Americans who are no longer affiliated with traditional religious institutions or denominations. In the absence of traditional religious affiliation, people are increasingly turning to popular culture to explore and interrogate…
Read More…l drew a welter of criticism from multiple rights groups, governments, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the European parliament… This is the second piece of contentious and patently Russian-inspired legislation to come off the rails in Kyrgyzstan in recent weeks. Earlier this month, parliament rejected a bill that would have seen internationally funded nongovernment group designated as “foreign agents.” The provision included in that la…
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