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Václav Havel: Democracy as Spiritual Discipline

…icians have a moral obligation to call their followers to be true to their best selves rather than pander to or inflame their followers’ worst instincts: Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It’s just that it’s incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed — as though it does not know what to rely on, where to begin, where or how to find meaningful outlets.  In suc…

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First Congregational UCC, Ripon Wisconsin

Cheese State Reality Check: On The Wisconsin Idea and the Social Gospel

…on works in Bascom Hall, and the Bascom dairy on campus sells probably the best ice cream in the state. Likewise Charles Van Hise, the long-serving president of the UW is remembered with a hall where generations of students have studied foreign languages. People outside of Badgerland might be more familiar with Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, founder of the Progressive Party in the early 20th century, and still today an inspiration to lefties. E…

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Catholic Healthcare Is Not the Enemy

…re or that no Catholic hospital ever denies treatment in pregnancy that is best for a woman. Nor am I suggesting that the Catholic bishops are the only adversaries to worry about. I am, for example, offended by the CHA’s claim that it needs to be exempt from the contraceptive mandate and cannot provide insurance coverage. I’m offended because Catholic hospitals can and have provided such insurance to employees before. But I refuse to accept that C…

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A far-right protestor wears a MAGA tophat with a grim expression.

Conservative Evangelicals Aren’t Hypocrites, They’re Sadists

…h a rabid culture warrior like Mike Pence in the #2 role. But probably the best evidence for somebody like this would be the ICE raids in Mississippi last week. Here’s Trump the authoritarian carrying out his promise to keep them safe—and the result is a terrorized, deflated community. People notice that kind of thing, especially when their church is called on to assist the victims. And it may never work! All the evidence indicates that there’s a…

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Reza Aslan’s Viral Fox News Interview Reveals More Than Just Christian Privilege

…ons about Jesus.  A classy, statesman-like takedown of an ethnocentrist at best (a bigot at worst) always sits better with the agreeable audience. The interview also exposed a double-standard—Green interviewed Christian professor Barry Vann about his book, Puritan Islam, without a hint of incredulity. This kind of inconsistency gets “The Daily Show” writers furiously typing. Those on Green’s side could gain satisfaction in the holes poked in Aslan…

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Talmud on Trial: Interfaith Dialogue in the 13th Century

…and its official positions. The Paris trial challenges both. Perhaps it’s best to encounter religions in the real world, informally, with a focus on actual actions, not official words. Pope Benedict XVI worked hard to improve the Church’s interfaith profile, with limited success. While his largely positive attitude toward other religions could not have been more different from that of the 13th century church, Benedict’s basic approach was the sam…

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We May Be Sacrificing Our Children to the God of the Gun — But it’s Not That the God Requires the Deaths

…ur Moloch,” written just after the Newtown murders nearly a decade ago, is best understood. He wrote, That horror [of the Sandy Hook shootings] cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. Th…

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ramadan

…the Stockholm summer every summer.) But it’s in the Muslim world that you best get that special starvation feel of the holy month. The world reorients itself, so that people overeat, overpray, and oversleep. But all the same, a practice as fulfilling and renewing as Ramadan inspires its own subculture (if that’s what you call the habits and norms of well over a billion people), so I’ve adapted a specialized Ramadan dictionary first featured on my…

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A ‘Pro-Life’ Buttigieg Ambush, Trump’s Corrupt Counsel, and More

…e, and I believe that a woman ought to be able to make that decision. “The best I can offer is that if we can’t agree on where to draw the line, the next best thing we can do is agree on who should draw the line. And in my view, it’s the woman who’s faced with that decision in her own life.” His response was quickly memed and circulated by his campaign on social media, where some described Ms. Day’s engagement with the candidate as an ambush of Mr…

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Marriage Equality: No More (Word) Games

…nt of this link in paragraph 14, the implicit argument is that marriage is best defined as a one-man-one-woman institution. I appreciated the intellectual care that went into Smith’s analysis. Following the example of some of history’s best thinkers, he took an issue that most people considered straightforward, complicated it, and then redirected the discussion. Ultimately, though, I found his deconstruction unconvincing. Let me explain… Dr. Smith…

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