Religion Dispatches
…e people who really struggle. “I’m thinking of the people in nursing homes today, who don’t know if they’re going be able to pay for the cost of being there. … I think of the people who may be losing their houses. I can’t even imagine the fear and the concern that’s out there today, because these big powerful politicians wanted to spend our money with no limit.” I think what’s most frustrating about this comment is, not only did Dobson… vote for t…
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…w Deal. In the pages of Christianity Today (the fundamentalist namesake of today’s popular evangelical magazine), Machen likened explaining the Constitution to President Roosevelt to explaining color to a blind man. But his concerns went beyond the President. When the Supreme Court upheld New Deal assistance to debtors in 1934 in Home Building & Loan Ass’n v. Blaisdell, Machen was despondent. “Chief Justice Hughes and his four associates have decl…
Read More…to a veritable boom in the quarrying industry were that still the practice today). The same for homosexuals. And the biblical conditions for divorce are so strict that a woman could be beaten within an inch of her life and still not be allowed to legally separate. The point is that nobody in the mainstream Christian church today would argue any of these propositions. A hundred years ago, that was not necessarily the case. In other words, the defin…
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…tinues. “But, Paige, this is your most defiant act of protest yet, because today, you make a public declaration that you are a child of God. Are you ready to be renamed and reclaimed in the name of Jesus?” Paige’s answer? “Absolutely.” A few episodes later, after she does a little more snooping and Elizabeth gently begins to try to tell her about their lives by taking her on a field trip to an impoverished, largely African-American neighborhood wh…
Read More…the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said, “We are disappointed with today’s decision. It is unacceptable for employers – especially for-profit companies – to use their personal beliefs as an excuse to deny critical health coverage to the people who work for them.” She added, “This is not religious freedom, this is discrimination. Real religious liberty gives everyone the right to make their own decisions about their own health, including wh…
Read More…theist is criticizing her for the wrong reasons.) This week, in advance of today’s Georgetown speech, Ryan received a letter from 90 professors, led by Georgetown’s Thomas Reese, S.J., telling him “your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.” In respo…
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…rganizing and firepower that progressives will need to defeat conservatism today. To be sure, there are cleavages within the conservative movement. Some cultural conservatives are willing to support contraception and comprehensive sex-ed in the name of reducing the need for abortion. Some hawks who supported the Iraq war nevertheless oppose torture and executive secrecy. And many fiscal conservatives are as disgusted with the lack of transparency…
Read More…other laws – especially regarding harassment – outside abortion clinics.” Today’s decision is limited to the 2007 Massachusetts law, and may not invalidate every buffer zone law currently on the books or that could be enacted in the future. The ruling leaves in place a 2000 decision upholding a Colorado law that imposed a 100 foot buffer zone outside all health care facilities, barring people from coming within eight feet of visitors to counsel t…
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…an alternative to yoga,” which she calls PraiseMoves. In a 2005 article in Today’s Christian Woman ominously titled “The Truth About Yoga,” Holly Vicente Robaina recounts Willis’ cautionary tale of how yoga led her into a life of errant New Age practices, loneliness, alcoholism, and promiscuity. After years of pain, she discovered Christianity, burned her New Age books, and gave up yoga. In a follow-upChristianity Today article titled “Take a Pass…
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…uman body. Craddock sacralized sexual intercourse, which is not radical by today’s popular American standards and, in Schmidt’s words, may even seem “mundane” to the contemporary reader. However, for the mainstream turn-of-the-century American, it was antisocial heterodoxy. This demonstrates that not only was the sacralization of the body present in this early system of modern yoga, but it was also so significant to that system that martyrdom occu…
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