Religion Dispatches
…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
Read More…School committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. • June 12, 1887 Cleveland, Tennessee. Will Guess went to the school and fatally shot Miss Irene Fann, his little sister’s teacher, for whipping her the day before. • June 13, 1889 New Brunswick, New Jersey. Charles Crawford, upset over an argument with a school Trustee, went up to the window and fired a pistol into a crowded school room. The bullet lodged in the wall just above the teacher…
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…oke through and gained control of the presidency and Congress and passed a number of historic bills, including the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which reintroduced silver into the currency supply, and the McKinley Tariff Act, the Republican attempt to modernize the tariff schedule. They also passed a long-awaited pension for Civil War veterans and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Democrats dubbed the 51st Congress the “Billion Dollar Congress,” char…
Read More…ra Vanderslice “says her group is hoping to run its latest pro-Obama ad in Cleveland, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Columbus, as well as in smaller locales such as Findlay and Mount Vernon. Salem Radio affiliate WFHM 95.5 ‘The Fish’ in Cleveland is already running the ad featuring former Democratic Congressman Tony Hall of Dayton and words from the 25th chapter of Matthew.” (To hear the one-minute ad go here) On September 24, the Presidential Prayer…
Read More…ver, Porphyry’s description of demonized meat gained an unlikely ally: the Cleveland Clinic medical center. Researchers there suggested that certain gut bacteria may help explain the link between red meat and heart disease. These bacteria produce a chemical called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) whenever they digest lecithin, a major component of animal fat. The TMAO then makes it into the bloodstream and contributes to the clogging of arteries and…
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…bstract. But as the public ritual of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland unfolds, religion-oriented analyses of Trump can be useful. As more and more studies are showing, politics isn’t just about policy. It’s also about identity, community, meaning and belief—in other words, the domain of religion and religious scholarship. Durkheim’s theory of collective effervescence has been applied to everything from Grateful Dead shows to profess…
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…he July 12 all the Campus Martius was busy. Puerto Rico: Communities mourn Orlando victims The Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers reports on families and communities in Puerto Rico mourning the victims of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Nepal: Interview with intersex activist UNAIDS publishes an interview with Esan Regmi, an intersex man who was lead facilitator at Nepal’s first national meeting earlier this year on the issues and chall…
Read More…a Christian radio station is involved, lucky radio callers generally land tickets to a concert, sporting event, or perhaps a trip to be “pampered” at one of the popular vacation destinations (Cancun, Disneyland, Las Vegas, etc). Speaking of Christian radio, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bib…
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…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
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…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…
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