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Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…’t have any guards. The premise is that the guard-inmate relationship is always violent, so there’s a code of conduct that is enforced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three…

Penn Jillette’s Signs You May Already Be an Atheist

By Steve A. Wiggins

…While those who pick it up as believers or agnostics probably won’t come away changed, they will sense that it—like the magic for which Penn Jillette is so well known—has brought them to an unexpected place. Indeed, the book is full of surprises. (If I told you here, they would no longer be surprises, would they?) God, No! is not for everyone. Those who object to coarse language or sexual situations will find themselves uncomfortable at several j…

What’s More Frightening Than Snakes on a Plane?

By Devin Kuhn-Choi

…an ad in a local shop or community center. Last minute emergency? Call the airline right away to see about possibilities for accommodating your needs. Likewise, if one is ardently anti-abortion for moral reasons, rather than only focus on making it illegal, prevent it by limiting unwanted pregnancies: help ensure adequate, healthy sex education and contraception are available to those who need or want them. Work to make affordable, quality prenata…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…ance-enhancing drugs. The sense of freedom and fun (and free food, even if airline food) was exhilarating. The airport has now become a place of horror. Do they have full-body scanners? I wonder as I’m herded into a long, bovine line. Abattoir or boudoir? Why is this bothering me so much? Don’t Touch Me There Even cursory reflection reveals my embodiment issues are buried deep in my religious upbringing. I was a teenage fundamentalist. That remark…

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men “Stand Up” for “Religious Freedom”… On a Plane

By Kara Loewentheil

…pes that if you create enough problems the authority in question will cede way (in other words you block the aisles for a 10 hour flight, or you file lawsuits and cost the government time and money defending the law you tried to convince it not to pass, and then once you get an accommodation you sue to be exempted from that as well). The real difference here is that if you don’t want to deal with ultra-Orthodox men interfering in your travel, you…

What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…s—which doesn’t make it any less significant to its receivers. Myths are always mash-ups. The audience of Lost moves from a state of disbelief and objectivity into a realm of complicity. In a recent New York Times interview, co-writer Damon Lindelhof suggests, One of the things that we completely own is that in many ways Lost is a mash-up/remix of our favorite stories, whether that’s Bible stories from Sunday school or Narnia or Star Wars or the w…

St. Antoninus: The Patron Saint of Pro-Choice Catholics

By Daniel C. Maguire

…re were other notable theologians who held the same view and allowed for a number of other exceptions. Nor did the hierarchy object. Rather, the humble and very gifted Antoninus was appointed Archbishop of Florence in 1446 before being canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1523. There are Catholic parishes named for this pro-choice saint in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Newark, New Jersey. St. Antoninus was not a pro-choice loner in the Roman…

GOP “Stealthcare” Bill Reveals Catholic Bishops’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…tension the ACA, as an assault on “religious liberty,” helping to pave the way for successful Republican attacks on the health reform law. A new Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows just how successful the effort to forge the church’s opposition to reproductive and LGBT rights into a new political wedge issue to motivate right-leaning religious voters has been. According to the poll, which probed the political divide between urban a…

God’s Obituary: A Humanist Response to Mass Murder

By Anthony B. Pinn

…for comfort, for an easy life. No, it’s recognition that nothing explains away the destruction of life’s integrity; but instead it highlights the fact that we labor in this world without cosmic aid that can protect us from us. Appeals to free will (as my comments are bound to generate) might not be a limitation God imposes on God’s self. It may simply be a weak way of saying we are in control, or what the late William R. Jones—philosopher of relig…

Religious Right Dream of Privatized Public Education Gets Boost

By Julie Ingersoll

…eland, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Indianapolis, Pewaukee, WI; Sacramento and Newark), “Education Revolution Tour,” the goal of which is to renew “American Exceptionalism.” The result of these reforms is likely to be a fractured educational system incapable of serving the very purpose of public education: to ensure an educated citizenry capable of participating in a democracy. An RD commenter, frharry, to my previous post about this topic, rightly no…