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Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

…Mark C. Taylor: Religion can be understood as a system of symbols (creed, code, cultus) by means of which people (a community) orient themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and values. (Albanese) Religion, I would argue, is a complex adaptive network of myths, symbols, rituals, and concepts that simultaneously figure patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting and disrupt stable structures of mea…

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Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

…conveyed this view in a very concise and pithy manner. The idea was first promoted by Christians. In 1853 Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came…

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Tinkering with Creation: Intelligent Design 2.0

…, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana became the first governor to sign an “academic freedom” bill into law. Observers on both sides of the issue are now waiting for the first school district in the state to adopt a curriculum based on this new language. Of course, these academic freedom bills, along with the “teach the strengths and weaknesses” wording in Texas are merely a watered-down version of intelligent design—what Judge John E. Jones III, in his rul…

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This is not a Religion Column: Sarah Palin, American

…ers listened to Sarah Palin’s convention address expecting heavy religious code, the scriptural allusions that have come to be standard fare in speeches by Republicans and Barack Obama. There wasn’t much—“a servant’s heart,” a prayer for her son sent off to war. But there was, for those with ears to hear it, a far more disturbing allusion: to Westbrook Pegler, a mid-century Rush Limbaugh, and then some. At the height of his popularity, he was more…

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Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

…hing the sins of a lost city, some prescriptions in the Israelite holiness code, and the Apostle Paul on the consequences of pagan idolatry. Or so the passages read to me.) Calling out the numbers is not meant to start a conversation about what these biblical passages might mean—or about how different Christian communities have decided to determine the applied meaning of any verse in their version of the Bible. The verses are often cited in church…

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McCain’s VP Courts Conservative Evangelicals

…oles, prioritizing women’s roles in the home and in raising children, felt free to praise the way Palin balances “the personal and professional in admirable ways.” From the sound of Palin’s acceptance speech, it sounds as though Crouse knows her woman. In a line that evoked George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign references to the “power in the blood,” (referencing an old gospel hymn There is Power in the Blood [of the Lamb]) Palin declared that she would…

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Margaret Cho: God Bless You, F***ing F***ers 

…dy for some serious War on Culture…er…culture war. So there’s Christian as code-word for ‘evangelical.’ Like when Republican politicians say it. And there’s Christian meaning Protestant, as opposed to Catholic. And there’s Christian the way a missionary might mean it, (as opposed to heathen?). And there are those “anonymous Christians,” or involuntary Christians…was that Rahner who devised that category? Does anyone outside of seminary or grad sch…

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Conservative Christian Book on Obama’s Faith

…une 17, Chris Rodda, a Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), an expert on historical revisionism and a frequent contributor to the blog Talk2Action, discusses the rebroadcast of a segment of an HDNet Dan Rather Reports program titled “Christian Soldiers,” (originally aired on October 2, 2007), which features Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF and Stephen Mansfield. “When his last book, Ten Tortu…

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Dispatches from the Beltway: Beyond the Graying and Greening Religious Right

…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…

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The Revolution Will Not Be Fetishized: Taking Resistance Beyond the Spiritual Industrial Complex

…nd historical-critical commentary, and a public space that guarantees both freedom of and from religion. Hence, I am certain the number of self-proclaimed “spiritual but not religious” people at the marches on January 21st was significant. But, more importantly, I wonder what those spiritual people will do now to resist the oppressive policies and efforts of the Trump administration? It is not enough to raise their signs at Women’s Marches, lower…

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