Religion Dispatches
…me from dancing with the one I love but my mind holds the key set my body free, set my spirit free… And a symphonic explosion of sound highlights the climax to “Intervention”: Been working for the church while your life falls apart been singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart The Wilderness Downtown When Neon Bible was released in 2007, lead vocalist and songwriter Win Butler, who has spoken about his Mormon upbringing and religious influe…
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…own spiritual/cultural values. Liberals see porous borders as a symbol of freedom: free movement, free choice, and the free creativity generated by the intermingling of peoples. To conservatives, the very presence of so many Illegal “aliens” proves that the borders they once imagined as the key to a safe, orderly life have long been crumbling around them. To give undocumented people legal status would be further proof that the nation’s walls and…
Read More…e explicit in their concern for structural justice and the failings of the free market system. Famously, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium denounces those who “continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world” as expressing a “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding eco…
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…he said recently, “My people are happy, and they’re happy, because they’re free.” Our heritage is rife with heroes choosing death over tyranny. “Live free or die,” for instance. See also: “Don’t tread on me.” But nowhere is there a hero choosing death over democracy. We must reconsider the credit we give. In places like South Dakota, individual liberty is being perverted in the interest of the group, of the tribe, of the collective, so that indivi…
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…ion to what we hope will merely be our greatest recession, the doctrine of free market fundamentalism remains the alpha and the omega of American conservatism. That doesn’t prevent Christian conservatives from favoring government subsidies for the rich; they simply reframe it as God’s will, recruiting the creator as a crony. Biblical capitalism isn’t, ultimately, a supply-and-demand religion. Between business conservatism’s love of laissez-faire a…
Read More…in all 50 states. In fact, even the California minister who filed suit is free to practice the debunked “therapy”—he just can’t engage minors in the practice, and can’t represent himself as a state-licensed therapist offering that treatment. In his ministerial duties he is free to preach about the power of prayer (or, in some cases, more nefarious tactics) to “rescue” people from the bonds of queerness. But what he can’t do, according to the newl…
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…and civic clout. It is also common to overestimate the extent of religious freedom in American culture. Craddock gained no traction whatsoever in marshaling First Amendment liberties against legal proscriptions of obscenity and blasphemy. Indeed, that she claimed to be Pastor of the Church of Yoga only made her seem doubly damned; a purveyor of blasphemous obscenity. Finally, we still often associate the Victorian era with tight-lipped reticence a…
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…Secular Humanists said that the so-called northern triangle in Central America already has the highest rate of violence against transgender people in Latin America and that the legislation “puts them in an even more vulnerable position.” Russia: More calls for investigation of killings in Chechnya, but is Putin a paper tiger? CNN’s Matthew Chance reported from Moscow on the “terrifying” death threats made by Muslim clerics against Elena Milashina…
Read More…at gave the federal government a greater role in battling crimes against African Americans in the Jim Crow South and also allowed the Justice Department to address the denial of voting rights. It’s nothing new. The bill also would also make some federal money available to for law enforcement training. It would help police officers recognize bias-motivated violence and combat it, especially among young people. While opposition arguments are abundan…
Read More…party-oriented organization, Vision2America, joined the anti-union chorus today. DeMar promotes his views in a number of venues, each tailored to connect with a specific group. His American Vision is explicitly Reconstructionist, arguing that there is no neutrality and that all the positions he takes are rooted in biblical law. Vision2America, though, has a slightly different audience, so while the article focuses only on the Wisconsin budget cri…
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