Religion Dispatches
…this, but as it stands, I have three different prayer time schedules: my iphone has one from the Ipray app; and I printed one off line from Islamicity; then collected one from my favorite mosque, when I went there for the tarawih prayer the night proceeding the first day of fasting. None of them have the same time on it. I therefore create a buffer to offset any slight disagreement a few minutes in the morning and a few at sunset. The rest I leav…
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…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were openi…
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…ed on March 9 with a front-page story in USA Today. For the last week, his phone ringing off the hook, Kosmin has become a lightning-rod for anxiety about the decline of American religiosity. “Whoever doesn’t win the election is going to complain about voting fraud,” he says with a chuckle. In its first two days online, the ARIS’ 26-page summary report [pdf], authored by Kosmin and his Trinity College colleague Ariela Keysar, scored 40,000 downloa…
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…and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone. Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in respect to the political and cultural stances and demographic constituencies of the disting…
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…erything. So now if I’m trying to open up a bank account, I’m doing a cell phone application, or anything, that statement is there, it has just gone into everything, every aspect of one’s life, it’s there. It’s ridiculous to have that, but nonetheless it’s real. The problems are not just administrative: Ahmadis have a “glass ceiling” in the civil service, and discriminatory use of voter registration lists (Ahmadis are enrolled separately) keeps th…
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…o-life, conservative state. Senator Crain’s office did not return repeated phone calls, but according to The Daily Beast, he “said the bill is simply a statement that Oklahoma is ‘pro-life.’” Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman said much the same thing, according to Reuters, offering that “Oklahoma is a conservative pro-life state—we are proud to stand up for what we know is right.” Well, yes, it feels very good to be proud of things, doesn’t it? Might I…
Read More…ut a jaguar paw print — sadly no jaguar. Leaf cutter ants marched back and forth lugging bits of green on immaculately cleared trails reaching into the jungle farther than the beam of our flashlight. Never have I been so surrounded by such rich primitive fecund life. It is intoxicating and disorienting. From the sky came an incredible BOOM. “What was that?” Julian said slowly, as if we would have any clue. The sound continued to reverberate throug…
Read More…l was conducted by TNS, an independent research firm which conducts weekly phone polls, according to a Republicans for Choice press release. The poll asked, regardless of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or the government [should] make the decision.” Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly” felt that the woman, her family, and her doc…
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…ntroversial. I don’t like being controversial. I get abused a lot in mail, phone calls and that sort of thing. I don’t enjoy that. But, if you are controversial in the public arena, the people who have given up on Christianity say, “My God, there must be something more to this story than I realized.” So, being controversial is my doorway to the generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from orig…
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…enough to lend Azusa-esque credibility to Feucht’s racial reconciliation efforts: “By comparison, this is tepid and meager and totally behind the ball.” Fred Berry, who couldn’t be reached for an interview, declared in a press release that “The color line is washed away in the blood of Jesus!” and announced plans for a mural to honor Seymour and the “movement which stood on holy ground and declared racial reconciliation in a time of great racial d…
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