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Lou Engle Attempts To Backpedal On Uganda Anti-Gay Bill

By Sarah Posner

…, told him that they met with Engle and he told them he supported the bill: 1. Both Oyet and Bahati were ecstatic at what they perceived as Engle’s strong support of the bill. They felt his rally and his statements would be a turning point for the bill, reassuring their Ugandan allies that they had support abroad. 2. Both Oyet and Bahati told me that Engle had explicitly expressed his support for the bill, telling them that he had to lie to the We…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…The point is that the really seismic changes at the Vatican all came in the 15th and 16th centuries, the age that just so happened to encompass the Protestant rebellion and the emergence of modern science at once. But by the 17th century, mathematics—and specifically mathematical physics—achieved a dominance that overturned the main interpretive principles that had been widely accepted since the time of Aristotle’s Physics: namely, that the variou…

Beyond Retribution: Bin Laden’s Death in its Cosmic Context

By Eric Reitan

…ies haven’t been redeemed. Crime and Punishment Let me explain. Back in the 1990s I was deeply involved with the Alternatives to Violence Project, an organization committed to offering experiential workshops, mainly in prisons, aimed at teaching nonviolent conflict resolution and communication skills, building communities of trust, and cultivating a spirit of nonviolence. Going into prisons as much as I did, my academic research naturally gravitat…

Adult Realism and the State of This Union

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…t we do to deliberate about such big problems. The line was offered in the spirit of can-do American industriousness, the notion that when we put our minds to a thing, we achieve it beyond the wildest expectations of a witnessing world. Such a line is neither Niebuhrian, nor necessarily very realistic. The vast majority of the President’s attention in this speech was focused on the economy, for obvious reasons. And he was trying to get back on mes…

Wojnarowicz’s Ant-Covered Jesus: Blasphemy or Religious Art?

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…Diamanda Galás (“This is the Law of the Plague” with lyrics from Leviticus 15). The 13-minute version that Wojnarowicz edited is silent. Much of the imagery comes from Wojnarowicz’s time in Mexico in the 1980s, and shot on Super-8 film. Mexican Day of the Dead ceremonies mix with Aztec statues; scenes of professional wrestling merge with cockfights and bullfights; strong crucifixion imagery merges with street scenes from Mexican cities and towns;…

Hajj Journal:
This Cultural Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…ning, many people had far less than that. Never mind the VIP conditions. I managed to return to the tent for more reading meditation and prayer until about half hour before sunset when the women joined the men again (our ONLY semblance of being a “group”) and a long du’a was read in Arabic. Again later I heard complaints that since this was in Arabic it excluded the non-Arabic speakers. So that is what happens when your group speaks four languages…

High Schooler says Barbara Ehrenreich’s Book Violates his Civil Rights

By Sarah Posner

…roup in recognition of books “which affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” In the section at issue, I observed that the social teachings of Jesus went utterly unmentioned at the tent revival I attended. The revival preachers clearly preferred the dead and risen Christ to the living Jesus — who did indeed drink wine and could even make it out of water. As for the vagrancy charge: that’s what he was, a homeless, itinerant preacher. Ehrenrei…

“Dark” Skin No Longer a Curse in Online Book of Mormon

By Joanna Brooks

…Mormon did not feature summary chapter headings. Headings were added in the 1920s and revised in the 1980s by Bruce R. McConkie, author of Mormon Doctrine (now out of print), a compendium of Mormon theology controversial both for its explicit anti-Catholicism and its promulgation of adoctrinal racist folklore, as we covered here at RD. In 1981, the Church changed the language of 2 Nephi 30: 6 to remove the statement that Lamanites who repented wou…

2010: A Banner Year for Biblical Patriarchy

By Julie Ingersoll

…Baby Conference. At the conference they honored Michelle Duggar, mother of 19 children as an example who “has encouraged many women to embrace the blessing of children and rejoice in the high calling of motherhood.” Finally, while 2010 saw developments in the Creationist Movement, it also sought to frame environmentalism as an anti-Christian Pantheisic religion that threatens human life across the planet and launched the Mysterious Islands Campai…

Bishops vs. Nuns: Who Spoke for God in 2010?

By Eugene McMullan

…heir hurtful activism. Indeed, Ratzinger’s infamous “Halloween Letter” from 1986 (usually read as an anti-gay document) states: It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic di…