Religion Dispatches
…rced to. The rationalists of the West, the free peoples of Middle Earth, must step in to liberate her. III. If Islam Were a Race, Would Islamophobia Be Racist? The right question to ask is why Muslims need liberation. Why can’t they (we) liberate ourselves? There is a racist logic within Islamophobia, which presents from time to time in the way Muslims are described and treated. As a single, indivisible whole. And, of course, a miserable one at…
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…nscendent relationship was first measured starting in the late ‘90s. The best study to come out was Kenneth Kendler’s in 1997, and then again in 1999. They simply asked people to self-report, which turned out to be extremely valid when you’re talking about self-experienced spirituality. One thing we found was that a sense of living in a sacred world, or simply saying spirituality is important to me, is always highly correlated with that personal r…
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…aders and members tomorrow and existed only as a historical relic, I would still strive to puzzle out how my past—including the two and a half decades I spent as a devout Mormon—shaped my present life. Not only was the LDS church a dominant institution in my life, it was something I had a personal and passionate relationship with. It wasn’t merely the religion of my community; it was, more importantly, my own private religion. I studied its texts,…
Read More…ear in agreement with what we are doing. I may ask for your church’s name, phone number, and Web site to verify your stand. What I see as the sin at the heart of Grizzard and Jones’ actions—as well as at the heart of anyone who seeks to violently control the free will or belief of others—is lust. These men lust for control; and in their lust they objectify others, people they call “heretics” or “sinners.” Lust, in and of itself, is not a bad thing…
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…I am one of the religious leaders in this country who has one of the largest numbers of black gay churches in the U.S. gathered together. I don’t know anybody that has a larger number of black gay churches meeting together. Not gay churches—the MCC definitely has the corner on that. Do you work together? Very closely. In fact I have an MCC credential, an ordination. Were there times in your life when you did question your ability to stay in the…
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…if one blindly accepted the idea that every passage in the Bible, in its most straightforward reading, represents the inerrant word of a perfectly loving God. But if we accept this idea, either we’ll need to ignore the lessons drawn from sensitive and empathetic attention to our gay and lesbian neighbors, or we’ll need to refrain from practicing such attention at all. After all, when we do attend to gays and lesbians (as love for them calls us to…
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…erica tells a story of how democratic politics and the rapid rise of populist Christian sects created a new context for American ideas of religio-political freedom. During the disruptions of the Revolutionary era, evangelical Christianity was at a relative low point. In 1780, few could have predicted the explosion of democratic Christianity that would so deeply imprint American culture by the 1830s, replacing Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a secular…
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…Nations, a case for the U.S or Israel attacking Iran, and a pitch for the phone ministry 1-888-RAPTURE. Apparently the UFO issue got onto Lindsey’s radar screen because of reports that United Nations is paying attention to it, as discussed here. Lindsey offers a mass of evidence (quite disturbing if true) claiming sightings by military personnel who witnessed UFOs disarming nuclear weapons. In Lindsey’s interpretation, such disarmament fits a sim…
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…at it is: a nonsensical theory about sexuality invented by “gay” political strategists to serve their own selfish interests at the expense of the welfare of society as a whole. Also in 2002, Lively joined other activists in addressing a rally protesting the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd County High School in Cannonsburg, KY, where he said, “Normally you see these clubs only going in where the homosexuals already have significa…
Read More…in which they will put their spin on the election results by releasing a post election poll. Boasting that, leading up to the election, they distributed “6 million voter guides, 8 million mail pieces, 15 million phone calls, 500,000 doors knocked on by volunteers, and radio advertising covering 56 congressional districts and 22 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races,” they are now (apparently as I write this) surveying voters to learn “who went to th…
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