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Another Book Burner Lusts for Attention

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ear in agreement with what we are doing. I may ask for your church’s name, phone number, and Web site to verify your stand. What I see as the sin at the heart of Grizzard and Jones’ actions—as well as at the heart of anyone who seeks to violently control the free will or belief of others—is lust. These men lust for control; and in their lust they objectify others, people they call “heretics” or “sinners.” Lust, in and of itself, is not a bad thing…

Ralph Reed’s Group Goes after “Union Thugs” in Wisconsin

By Sarah Posner

…be canvassing the state, in preparation for “a full-scale get-out-the-vote phone bank operation to make sure every last pro-freedom and pro-family voter goes to vote on behalf of our values.” So far, the right’s anti-union battleground in Wisconsin hasn’t been explicitly framed as a “pro-family” issue, but here’s Marx: Please join Tony Nasvik and join the fight with 100 plus FFC activists who will be going door-to-door encouraging the Badger State…

Playing God in the Wild Kingdom

By Lauri Lebo

…ould make out the big boy in the reeds and coasted towards him to see how close I could get before he hopped into the water. But even as I came closer, the frog didn’t move. Finally, I drifted to within three feet of him, yet he was still staring back at me, and still offering occasional croaks. That’s when I noticed the frog’s back end was missing, having disappeared inside the mouth of a really large black snake. The frog’s head and arms were al…

Church Uses Facebook for Sacramental Scrutiny at its Peril

By Elizabeth Drescher

…tersects the Church’s medieval sacramental structure. In 2011, a new smartphone app aimed to support preparation for and the practice of confession ended up generating more confusion than contrition when a not particularly social design invited people to conclude that absolution was granted by way of the Confession app itself rather than, according to Catholic teaching, through the mediation of the priest. No wonder Pope Benedict XVI’s Message fo…

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: The Problem of the Rape Exception

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…hicago NORC General Social Survey. From the nineties to the ‘aughties that number rose from 16% to 21%—more than one in five Americans. Meanwhile the GOP has, since January, been busy trying to shrink the very definition of rape to only deem those who suffered “forcible rape” eligible to receive federal funding for an abortion. Forcible. Not statutory rape. These are the kinds of distinctions they find it crucial to draw. What, you thought they’…

A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?

By Tom Bartlett

…d me he was fairly sure this would be the end. Not a hundred percent, but close. After May 21, his faith was so shaken that he apologized on Facebook to the friends he had tried to convert. But as October 21 drew closer, he found himself wanting to believe again. “I’ve been convinced for 10 years that this would be it,” he said. “I think it will be the end of everything.” Another engineer I came to know had spent most of his retirement savings, we…

A Religious History of American Neuroscience

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

…me in the SPR threw themselves behind a new contraption called the “psycho-phone” through which the inventors claimed to be hearing the voices of angels. The psychophone no doubt sounds absurd, but I can’t say that it sounds much more far-fetched than a transcranial magnetic stimulator. Both demonstrate the enduring cultural impulse toward techno-theologizing. However much neuroscientists might want to forswear an interest in the metaphysics of th…

Accused of Anti-Semitism, Trump Aide Makes Ancestry Appeal

By Michael Schulson

…Jewish heritage of my wife of 38 years,” he wrote in an email. Later in a phone interview, he said his wife was not a practicing Jew but “ethnically Jewish” because her maternal grandmother was a Jew. Of course, it is possible to express [insert flavor of bigotry here] even if you have friends, relatives, partners, or a spouse who identify as part of [group that is the target of that bigotry]. It’s a close cousin to the “some of my best friends a…

Soldier Hot Line Draws Calls Over DADT Repeal

By Lauri Lebo

…far between. The New York Times builds its whole story out of a handful of phone calls and an email. But the article indicates that those who run the various nonprofits that help soldiers achieve conscientious objector status expect a floodgate of calls if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is formally repealed. The good news is that the groups don’t think there is legal basis for the claims. In the “don’t ask, don’t tell” cases, Ms. McNeil concluded that there…

Mormons Prepare for WA Marriage Equality Fight

By Joanna Brooks

…. Forbidding civil gay marriage means forbidding people from choosing. To close, tell me how you came to be supporters of same-sex civil marriage rights. SL: I’ve never been against gay rights. I remember when I was a little kid, these lifelong family friends—their daughter came out as a lesbian. They were Mormon, and the dad was bishop of their local congregation. He did not allow his daughter to bring her partner home for Thanksgiving. I though…