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Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

…e supremacist movements.” I catch up with the Rev. David Ostendorf by cell phone while he is waiting for a plane at an East Coast airport. He is the executive director of the CNC where Ward works. Ostendorf, A United Church of Christ minister, once led PrairieFire Rural Action, a group that tried to save family farms during a major agricultural economic crisis in the 1980s. “Back then we helped build a popular economic political movement among fam…

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Confessions of a Hater

…ot. After that, he stayed more often after class, one day whipping out his phone to show me a photo of a white supremacist leader standing up in a convertible during what was obviously a white pride parade. The red-faced, fist waving man in the picture was flanked by two little girls sitting in the back seat, arms crossed with very pronounced frowns on their faces. “They don’t look all that happy,” I remarked to my student. “Those are my daughters…

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Scolding Those Who Choose Pets But No Children Pope Misses the Rainforest for the Trees

…ghlighted the irony of a childless man scolding those without children. My phone went wild with calls from animal lovers, queer friends and childless Catholic couples as well. An estimated 1.1 billion people belong to the Roman Catholic church. But even many of those who aren’t Catholic consider the pope’s words influential or have concerns about how his words can affect cultures, laws, and policies. I understood why they were dismayed. As an inte…

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Romney Had No Clue as to Obama Ground Game

…n Ohio. And eavesdropped on an Obama canvasser. I mean, I spent 45 minutes phone-banking the parking garage of a lowly San Diego field office with four children under nine years old hopped up on Doritos and doing laps around my folding chair, and even under those suboptimal circumstances I could tell right away that Obama’s data was even better than it was in 2008 and that there was hardcore focus on the 18- to 29-year-old set. And, mind you, I’m…

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Suicide Leads to Calls for Improved Treatment of LGBT Mormons

…erence talk shaming homosexuality. “I have a brother who said to me on the phone last Christmas, ‘Elder Packer says God does not make gays. This is your choice.’ And then he used some very hurtful language with me,” Jahn relates. “I had to hang up on him. But he feels he has been given permission to speak this way by the prophet.” “Even a simple phrase uttered by a General Authority can give Church members broad permission to look down on, discrim…

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Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

…k millennials ages 18-29 comprise 20% of historically black churches. This number is roughly comparable to that of the baby boomer generation. Thus, religious affiliation for young black adults does not show the same kind of downward shift as that of the non-black population (the data on black children in the generation after the millennials suggest high levels of religiosity as well). African Americans in general, and African-American women in pa…

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Walking Dead and Zombie Ethics, or “Don’t Fight the Zombies. You Can’t Win”

…to the mall, as if they remember that this place somehow provided them comfort. This comfort, of course, comes from rampant consumerism. Something about “us” seems to linger as zombies wander throughout the desolate shopping space. What is it? Warm Bodies, a recent teen zombie romance, presents more aware zombies with habits, routines, and interior lives. They still consume brains, but they might feel bad about it. The narrator and protagonist, a…

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“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

…ill become much richer than the other. This is the nature of capitalism, unfortunately. The mechanism on the other extreme is the propensity for people, when lacking incentive, to avoid doing anything at all. Incentivization is important. The extreme example is collectivization in communist countries. If you collectivize farms, everybody starves because nobody works hard enough to produce sufficient food. And then you move closer to capitalism lik…

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Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

…iticism from the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, in an editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of porn.”)   I don’t buy it. Anyone who understands the traction of evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment knows that most evangelical voters will never vote for Mitt Romney, especially if they have a choice in someone like Mike Huckabee. Marriott dropping porn won’t begin to make a dent in Romney’s (or even Huntsman’s) evangelical problem.   And…

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Departure of the Queen

…of my spiritual practice and the option to pray there brings me joy and comfort. I reflect back to the height of the weekend when guests and locals overflowed in the mosque, even spilling out to a tent set in the yard out front. Perhaps what I am feeling is a loss from all this company celebrating this time with the Queen. She has not yet departed after all, and we are still honored by her visit. Perhaps it is the deafening silence of being so rem…

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