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Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response

…es before we decide that, just maybe, our theory about the Bible isn’t the best fit with the idea that God is love—and hence isn’t the best fit with the content of the Bible itself? Any theory of the Bible that requires me to ignore my neighbors in favor of teasing out the correct meaning of Romans 1:24-27 seems to do an injustice to the Bible’s heart. If there’s a core message to the Christian Scriptures, it’s that Jesus—a person, not a book—is t…

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Meet the “New Age” Stephen Colbert

…the line!” But of course I need to look at it through my perspective. The best I can say is I do my best to be mindful of it. I never intend to attack or criticize people. What I always intend to do is expose the shadow side that people are usually not aware of. The type of comedy I enjoy is when the comedian delivers a line in such a way that it makes us become aware of something we previously weren’t aware of. The punch line is delivered and th…

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Beyond Progressive Religion

…ity is under siege. Being progressive about religion requires rescuing the best of atheism and progressive Christianity while discarding their mistakes. From atheists, I’d rescue the commitment to reason. Like them, I’m unwilling to abdicate the use of my rational capacity in the name of faith. Unlike atheists, however, I don’t believe religions are false. Billions of people practice religions; in that sense they’re true. Billions of people believ…

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Rites, Rituals, and the King

…o. What is more, one feature of ritual is that the “message” is not self encoded. That is why I keep making a distinction between this and what we mostly understand when we use the word prayer in English. Prayer is all about our immediate status. “Help me get through this”, “Give me an A on the exam”, “make her heart turn to love me”, “Grant me a successful hajj.” etc. Worship responds to a higher level in fact, the highest level of formality. Eve…

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Purpose Driven Atheism: Secular Maharishis Seeking True Believers

…bout thanksgiving, shared suffering, loss, pain, generosity, and love. The best religious people and the best secular people learn to ignore our chosen (or inherited) religions’ nastier teachings (be those found in the Bible or in the “science” of eugenics and white racial superiority) in order to preserve the spirit of our faiths, be it a faith in secular humanism, science, God or in all of the above. It’s the tediously consistent fundamentalists…

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Ann Coulter Puts the “Con” in “Homocon 2010”

…my best friends are gay Republicans. Well, I guess I should say some of my best friends are gay former Republicans. They didn’t leave the party, they tell me. Instead, the party left them with its frog-stepping march to the right-wing fringe over the past few years. These are people who believe in fiscal conservatism, but have seen the Republicans run up record deficits. They like the tax cuts, they say, but have seen Goldwater Republicanism tramp…

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Religion, Morality, and the Death of the American Soap Opera

…from early on the soap had a frivolous, ridiculous aesthetic reputation at best, and was considered an outright poisonous influence at worst. During the Second World War, at least one psychiatrist worried that radio soaps were undermining the war morale, distracting women with addictive stories that promoted destructive values. To label something a “soap opera” today still implies that what you are describing involves immature behavior, improbable…

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America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…

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Evolution Sunday: Pastors Celebrate Darwin

…their assault on teaching evolution in science class. Zimmerman thinks the best way to change this mindset is for scientists to step back from the debate and hand the reins over to religious leaders. This Feb. 12 will be Darwin’s 200th birthday. Three days later, as part of Evolution Sunday, a holiday Zimmerman created, pastors around the world will be speaking from the pulpit about Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of the world. Zimmerma…

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The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

…t.” It’s clear in the song that Pigpen’s search for a viable number is, at best, a futile proposition. Still he dials the telephone operator to try find that lost landline. Problem is, he’s not even sure which direction she went. “I think she’s somewhere down south, down about Baton Rouge,” Pigpen begins, but then changes his mind. “She could be hangin’ round the steel mill, working in a house of blue lights, riding a getaway bus out of Portland.”…

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