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Monstrous Futures: Dungeons & Dragons, Harbinger of the “None” Generation, Turns 40

…lity, but a dive into progressive dreams about what the world ought to be. Today’s media marketplace was constructed on a scaffold of adventures, role-played in the depths of the night, fueled by pizza, soda, and dreams. Today’s videogames are the highest grossing entertainment medium in the world, and they are the direct descendants of D&D. These digital worlds populated by monsters and magic were made possible by The Monster Manual. That volume,…

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Sacred&Profane: On Sexual Diversity, Perversity, and Ecstasy

…ndividual beyond the sensual pleasures of his or her body? Does sacred sex promote values in harmony with America’s highest principles of individual freedoms and the pursuit of happiness? After the 1960s, and to the present, public debate and awareness about the answers no longer depend solely on narrow, usually contradictory, Christian principles and doctrines. These days, answers come from Americans who publicly challenge limits on their pursuit…

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Lincoln and Obama: A Precarious Parallel

…el parallels that of the United Farm Workers. Swirling comparisons between today’s economic crisis and the Great Depression add a soupçon of FDR to Obama’s aura as well. (For a piece on the many ways that Obama has been compared to other presidents, read “Coming soon…Obama as Millard Fillmore.”) And, like his predecessors, Obama draws on the iconography of American history by citing our founding texts as well; in Baltimore, for example, Obama said…

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New Poll Shows Gays and Lesbians Believe in God

…a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in your life today,” such a relationship was more common among non-gays (75%) than among gay adults (58%). The research also revealed that straight adults were nearly twice as likely as gays to qualify as born again Christians (47% compared to 27%, respectively). So, while gays and lesbians claim faith, their “some type” of relationship with Jesus Christ is not the same type of relation…

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40 Million Nonbelievers in America? The Secret Is Almost Out

…from labels as they seek their own bearings and their own comfort zone in today’s America. Secularists welcomed President Obama’s shout-out to nonbelievers during his inaugural address, but are painfully aware that when launching his campaign he criticized them for trying to keep religion out of the public square, but not the religious right for its attempts to erase the line between church and state. They worry, along with Americans United for t…

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Hacking the Vatican

…ement on the group’s Italian-language website declared, “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world.” The statement alluded to the burning of heretics, the repression of Galileo, the genocide of Native Americans, aiding Nazi fugitives, and the more recent sexual abuse scandal. Anonymous members attemp…

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Obama Muffs Question On Faith-Based Hiring Discrimination

…taxpayers. I would urge the president to reconsider the statements he made today, and stick to his campaign promise of 2008 by signing an executive order barring any taxpayer funding of religious organizations that discriminate on the basis of belief.” UPDATE: The Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a CARD member, weighs in with a scathing statement: Frankly, the President’s response that he has “struck the right balance so fa…

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They’re Not Coming Back: The Religiously Unaffiliated and the Post-Religious Era

…ffiliated were not likely to stay that way as adults, two-thirds of adults today who were raised without religion stay nonreligious. In other words, this is becoming permanent. Circumstances, of course, have changed since the 1970s. Greater rates of religious intermarriage, including marriages between religious and nonreligious couples, mean that children are growing up with differing ideas about religiosity than they had in the past. Gen Xers are…

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Worse Than the Robber Barons

…ycoons—the Ones with the Diamond Stickpins Let me say a bit more about why today’s smooth operators are more loathsome than the tycoons of old. T.J. Stiles’ prizewinning new biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt shows the old reprobate to have been driven, ruthless, and sometimes brutal in pursuit of what he wanted. But always mindful of time and chance and never pretending to be of a superior species than the people he outwitted and exploited. It is…

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Dear Common Grounders, Religious Progressives, and Ecumenical Seminaries…

…l scholarship, a yet more widespread commentary on the tendency of many of today’s evangelical leaders to focus on tiny segments of scripture—this might be a valuable service. And might it cement an accommodation not with the evangelicals, but with secular intellectuals? That might be a good thing. The salient solidarity today may not be with the community of faith but among those who accept Enlightenment-generated standards for cognitive plausibi…

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