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Did Scientologists Take Over the Today Show?

By Becky Garrison

…em to at least separate the fluff from the facts. On Wednesday morning The Today Show ran a piece celebrating the work of Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers without addressing the concerns raised this organization’s “services,” which are designed by science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. This story mentions that these counselors are providing “touch assists” without bothering to bring in a representative from the National Mental Health Association…

Don’t Laugh at Rick Scott’s ‘Plan to Rescue America’ or Be Fooled by Reports of a ‘Backlash’ — His Only Mistake Was Revealing the Truth of Today’s GOP

By Annika Brockschmidt

…te Christian nationalist buzzwords actually achieves two things: first, it promotes classic GOP talking points of cutting back Social Security, fighting crime and strengthening border security; and second, it adds the unhinged culture war agenda of the far Right to the mix. Scott promotes a long list of drastic changes to the fabric of US society: in line with the Right’s attack on public education, schools will be forced to teach American excepti…

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

By Brian McGrath Davis

…for most of Western history “belief” has meant nothing like what it means today. Today, when someone asks me if I believe in God, for example, they are asking if I assent to the proposed verity or the factual existence of God—and usually it is in reference to a very specific understanding of that God. Similarly, if I’m asked if I have “faith in Christ”, the question is whether I agree with the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, died o…

Rejecting the Stranger: Why Rod Dreher’s Vision of Communal Christian Life Is Not So Benedictine After All

By Kaya Oakes

…mmunity, there have been female Benedictine communities for centuries, and today’s best known Benedictine writer is probably the theologian Joan Chittister, who was formerly the prioress of her community, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA. As a female religious leader, Chittister’s interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict offers some interesting contrast to Dreher’s. On the Benedictine charism of hospitality, Chittister writes that “Hospitalit…

Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground

By Jay Michaelson

…asure and marks the subservience of man to divine (or human) authority. We today are Abraham’s heirs, and re-enactors, of countless acts of circumscription. Today, as 2500 years ago, our own bodies are the instruments of authority, power, and control. Religious and political institutions of authority, usually backed up by violence, inscribe themselves on our genitals, our hairstyles, the ways in which we express our sexuality. We learn how to obey…

Christianity Today counsels “patience” on Uganda’s anti-gay law

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

Christianity Today has put its two cents in on the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda, telling gays and lesbians to unwad their knickers over the law and instead exercise “patience as Ugandan leaders sort out among themselves the best way to preserve their culture’s sexual mores.” Instead of strongly condemning this legislation, which President Barack Obama has called “odious,” CT tells us we need to understand the culture and give the Ugandans a fai…

Obama Foes Misrepresent Islam with “Apostate” Tactic

By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im

…in the pre-colonial era, as if they are the legal system of nation states today. Apostasy is only a crime in the penal codes of four or five out of the 40 Muslim-majority countries today. Dr. Luttwak claims that “another provision of Muslim law… prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.” This claim implies that there is something called “Muslim law,” which is either the…

I Am Better than Him

By Amina Wadud

…eless fire. This is important because in Islamic cosmology, Angels have no free will: they can only obey Allah. The jinn, like the human creatures, do have free will and can disobey. This is different from the version of this story in Genesis, where there was “war in heaven” and the war was against God. We don’t have a God in such compromising positions. In the Qur’anic story, Satan disobeys and still knows that God is one. Think about that. It wa…

A ‘Vows’ Piece in ‘The Times’ Shows How Doctrinaire Christian Celibacy Has Become Compared to its Ancient Roots

By Joseph Amar

…y. Ephrem reminded Covenanters that foregoing sexual intimacy was meant to free them from themselves, not create a privileged class of Christians. ‘Without good deeds,’ he bluntly affirmed, ‘sexual renunciation is worthless.’ Ephrem’s insights could be arrestingly prescient. He warned that if celibacy were to become institutionalized in the church, it could result in great harm. Ambitious churchmen, he said, might use it as a stepping stone to pri…

Unreasonable Doubt: Vincent Bugliosi Defends Agnosticism

By Eric Reitan

…rtainty, we think it is better to err on the side of letting the guilty go free than on the side of shattering the lives of the innocent. And so, even if we’re pretty confident of a person’s guilt, reasonable doubt is enough to set them free. Or at least that’s how things work in the context of the criminal justice system. On a more personal level, the presumption may well go the other way. Suppose the accused is your Uncle Jack. And suppose the c…