Religion Dispatches
…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
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…ts Muslim minority. In the decades since India’s independence in 1947, thousands of Muslims have died in incidents of mob violence. More than 7,000 died in the 1980s alone, according to reliable estimates. Major anti-Muslim riots occur about every decade, and dozens are killed annually in smaller or medium-scale anti-Muslims riots. To the extent, then, that Americans are perceived to care more about the plight of Christians than Muslims in India,…
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…s amount to the equivalent of however many billion sightings. I think that number was inflated. But it doesn’t matter much. What’s the difference between ten billion views and, say, one billion views? It’s all bad. It’s just this question of magnitude. It’s a little bit like you’ve seen the tip of the iceberg, and someone tells “You know, 90% of it is underneath.” I had a similar experience when I was working on my first book, Communities of Viole…
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…ign as head coach after discovering he’d been using his school-issued cell phone to call an escort service. Freeze was hired the following year by Liberty University, where he coached until he left for Auburn, just weeks after the announcement that his contract had been extended through 2030. Just this summer, Freeze contacted a former Liberty student, one of among 20 who’d taken legal action against Liberty for failing to pursue their sexual assa…
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…ty feet high and 240 feet in circumference. While bells tolled, the people sang hymns and the fire burned.” Wagner’s books remain influential in the NAR, a dynamic organizational revamping and politicization of much of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. The movement is still not well known, despite major coverage in, among others, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Salon, and The New Republic. The rise of the NAR, and the growth of the wi…
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…two months ago, the campaign for marriage in my country has mobilised thousands of new activists; and created a network that could be deployed to defend western civilisation more broadly and the Judeo-Christian ethic against all that’s been undermining it,’’ he said. “So far, the campaign to defend marriage in Australia has raised over $6m from more than 20,000 separate donors, and fielded more than 5,000 volunteers to doorknock and phone canvass…
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…ghlighted the irony of a childless man scolding those without children. My phone went wild with calls from animal lovers, queer friends and childless Catholic couples as well. An estimated 1.1 billion people belong to the Roman Catholic church. But even many of those who aren’t Catholic consider the pope’s words influential or have concerns about how his words can affect cultures, laws, and policies. I understood why they were dismayed. As an inte…
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…ionships between individuals, but is more easily disseminated to a greater number of people. We experience AI as a crisis because, like the rabbis of the Talmud, we actually have conflicting needs and desires. We crave the efficiency of AI because it can save time and effort, helping us write emails, make phone calls, and recall and summarize information. At the same time, we’re seeking human connection when we do reach out, and AI fails to provid…
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…eful guy.” After sentencing, in a video of him speaking from prison on the phone, Angeli renounced his lawyer and his mitigation plea of mental illness. The story he tells now is that he’s not crazy but acting on the invitation of President Trump. In preparation to appeal his sentence, he’s hired new attorneys from the NCLU, the Proud Boys’ version of the ACLU. So far, 80 of those charged have been found to have links to extremist groups. The Prou…
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…religiously-motivated pogroms afterwards. A few weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with a leader of New York City’s Bangladeshi Hindu community, who was extremely resistant to making the connection between the persecution of his fellow Hindus in Bangladesh and the persecution of Muslims in India. He insisted, “Please don’t tell me about India. I only want to focus on my people, Hindus in Bangladesh.” I suggested that there was folly in focusing on t…
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