Religion Dispatches
…lusion is very clear: but for the skittishness of his biggest investors, many of whom demanded big-time cash redemptions in late 2008 totalling some $7 billion, Bernie Madoff could have lived the lie to the end. It gives one pause. But if there is a connection really to be made between Hitler’s statist machine and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities they lie elsewhere, in a few suggestive details. Let’s start with the addresss. Bernie Madoff a…
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…cept religious pluralism as a fact of modern life that will not go away. Many neo-traditional religious persons may still dream of some individual evangelical successes, but the whole orientation of religion worldwide has shifted in the face of the growing awareness of the necessity of confronting pluralism as a permanent state of cultural affairs. When current religious forms turn violent, whom and what they attack are precisely those religious “…
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…m, championing of C. S. Lewis, and quoting of the Old Testament in major public speeches simply shield the fact that the enemy always comes clothed in righteousness—and that the Great Deceiver is among us. David Barton summarizes it most succinctly: “Many of these actions are literally unprecedented—this is the first time they have happened in four centuries of American history. The hostility of President Obama toward Biblical faith and values is…
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…ay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. “We will therefore not accept any friendship, aid or any other gesture that is conditional on accepting homosexuals or LGBT as they are now baptised by the powers that promote them,” he said. “As far as I am concerned, LGBT can only stand for Leprosy, Gonorrhoea, Bacteria and Tuberculosis; all of which are detrimental to human existence,” he added. Cameroon: Anti-gay persecution impedes public health At…
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…ressed that when they were removed, none of the activists were engaged in any form of direct action, protest, or confrontation. In fact, as Robertson wrote on his Huffington Post blog about the incident, he was coming off a first day of the conference that was “filled with wonderful conversations with pastors of churches, large and small, which were eager to hear my story and I, theirs.” Robertson told RD that everyone affiliated with FIA had gone…
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…y” differ from the definition you use in the lab? Spirituality comes for many people within their religious tradition, and for many other people spirituality comes outside their religious tradition. There’s a very broad range of spiritual experiences. The piece that I focus on in The Spiritual Child is a direct relationship with a higher power, whether that is in the language of God, Allah, Hashem—whatever the language may be, whether it’s Judeo-C…
Read More…hem. They loved him; they were terrified of him. The brothers never speak anymore; they talk on the phone at least once a day. It’s all there and it’s all unclear. All we know for a fact is that it all came apart very suddenly. On December 9, 2008, Bernie Madoff told his son, Mark, that he intended to pay out $173 million in holiday bonuses two months early. Deeply concerned, Mark revealed this to Andrew, who concluded that Madoff Securities shoul…
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…g the data but they go along with the lie. But I was also writing it for a number of people having these doubts who needed some data. What I’m saying isn’t brand new, but it’s saying, “Come on folks, let’s be honest about this.” You lead the moral vision of the book with a challenge to protect the environment. Was that intentional? I think that it opens people to the things that disturb them theologically. There is a growing sense that the wreckin…
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…was offended and let the email sender know. It led to a rich and powerful phone conversation later that day where we both came to an agreement that, if followed logically, the examples tell a story of a God who is either capricious or lacking in any real power. If God can put small delays in the path of a few people headed for the Twin Towers that day, why not do that to all of them? If God has the power to save some, why not save all? Why not pe…
Read More…’t express anti-Semitic sentiments: “I do not recall ever even hearing of any ‘allegations of anti-Semitism against [me],’ which would be preposterously false and defamatory because, among other reason(s), I am quite proud of the 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 pos…
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