How (Not) to Understand What Mormons Believe
…ects no one. It restores no one’s civil rights. It advances no progressive agenda. May all of us—including Fred Karger—enjoy shame-free holidays and a shame-free 2012….
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Shutdown is Over, But There Will Be a Next Time
…an dismantling Roosevelt’s legacy and successive presidents followed suit. Free markets boomed, social nets frayed and paeans flowed to America’s religious liberties. For many who opposed the New Deal and now stand arrayed against Obamacare, the message is the same: Jesus is the root of American democracy and capitalism. Christianity bestows freedom from big government, market regulations and sin. The message may be exploited for political or econ…
Read MoreThis Year in Satanism
…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…
Read MoreIs Pope Francis Yogaphobic?
…lity courses, yoga courses, or zen courses, but none of those things would free the person to be like a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit, according to Francis, has the power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at…
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Student Expelled from Sorority for Transphobia Illustrates the Problem with Evangelical Understanding of Pluralism
…oul of their ideology. When the logical endpoint of your understanding of “freedom of religion” is state-sanctioned violence against othered people, I contend that you’re doing freedom of religion wrong. This will bring us back to the prominent theologian I mentioned at the beginning of this article. (You didn’t think I was going to forget about him, did you?) Presbyterian Church of America minster, author, and apologist Tim Keller—he of “sex outs…
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Evangelical PR Blitz Before Midterms Won’t Fix the ‘81% Problem’
…age of conservative evangelicals rather than what all too often amounts to free PR, journalists will need to ask such questions, to focus on the ways that evangelicals make themselves “all things to all people,” addressing the general public very differently from the ways they address their own; and journalists will need to include the perspectives of critical researchers and exvangelicals alongside the voices of evangelicals in the articles they…
Read MoreDay of (Anti-Bullying) Silence Shows “Pro-Family” Activists to be Anti-Gay Bullies
…between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day.” In a document [pdf], entitled “Tips for the Last Minute Organizer of Those Whose Administrators Said ‘No,’” students are explicitly told that if a teacher asks them to speak they “do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time.” In schools where permission is denied, students are encouraged to remain silent at lunch, wear a button or a r…
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‘Manufactured’ Smear Campaign Attempts to Intimidate Church ‘Fasting From Whiteness’— It Didn’t Work
…nce of certain Ideas & Principles upon which this nation is built—Liberty, Freedom of Conscience, Equality.” Turning Point’s video suggests that the church’s program promotes “disunity” and “segregation.” But here too, there’s no evidence to support the claim, and plenty that refutes it. As Edgerton told the Chicago Sun Times, “You don’t fast from things that are despicable. … You don’t fast from things that are ugly,” he said. “You fast from thos…
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When Religion is a Refuge for Scoundrels: ‘Ryan Budget’ Edition
…undamentalism.” That encyclical included clear and direct criticism of the free-market fundamentalism at the heart of attempts to dismantle financial reform: The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample u…
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The Higher the Dome, The Closer to God: “Megachurches” Explores the Arid Architecture of America’s New Sanctuaries
…I swiped from the visitors’ table. (Catholics churches should step up the free swag factor.) Now driving through Northeast Los Angeles, I pass about half a dozen churches of sundry shapes and sizes. Some are storefront establishments, others steepled behemoths you can spot from the 110. Some are older and rooted, like the Iglesia Pentecostal Esmirna, others newer, like the recently planted Gold Line Church, named for the metro light rail that run…
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