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Jonestown at 40: The Real Conspiracy Is More Disturbing Than the Theories

…been acquired, and dress rehearsals occurred, all with the complicity of a number of individuals. Unfortunately that cohort included my older sister Carolyn Layton and my younger sister Annie Moore (both of whom died in Jonestown). But quite a few others were part of the conspiracy as well, including the team of young men from Jonestown who ambushed Congressman Ryan and his party as they attempted to leave. Knowing the identities of the conspirato…

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ABC’s Hit Sitcom Black-ish Does God, Pushes Theological Respectability

…Assuming all African Americans believe because they are African Americans flies in the face of a growing trend, tracked by pollsters. The Nones, or unaffiliated, represent a growing percentage of the US population. And African Americans represent an important demographic within this growth. Keep in mind, too, that the number of African Americans falling into this category has almost doubled over the past thirty-years. Belief in God doesn’t bind A…

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What Color is Vatican Smoke?

…man Catholic WomenPriests webpage and count the black faces—then count the number of graduate degrees after the names of the almost exclusively white women interviewed in Pink Smoke.) As the African-American students at the black seminary I attended used to say to the liberal white women who cross-registered there, “Who ‘we,’ white girl?” The pity of all this is that the exclusion of women from Roman Catholic ordination really is an injustice, one…

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Marriage equality and ‘the end of Catholic Ireland’; Gambian Prez vows to slit gays’ throats; Colombian govt affirms support for marriage and adoption; global LGBT recap

…f voters in favor of passing the amendment on May 22. That is a staggering number, considering that Irish voters only approved divorce in 1995, and with a margin of less than 1%. It also reflects how diminished the power of the Catholic Church has become over the past 20 years, thanks in large part to devastating sexual abuse scandals that have undermined its moral authority. Catholic bishops have come under fire from some conservative laypeople f…

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Forced Cremation of Covid Dead in Sri Lanka Further Marginalizes Muslim Community

…020, there have been 146 Covid deaths in Sri Lanka with a disproportionate number coming from the Muslim community; despite making up less than 10% of the population, Muslims account for nearly half of the reported deaths. A Muslim leader in Sri Lanka informed the authors that the number is actually higher, and that 82 Muslims have died, with over 70 cremations. The cremation of the victims was carried out by the state without the approval of the…

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Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

…hing you had to leave out? Early on I decided to focus intently on a small number of newspapers, rather than try to tackle the whole range of black newspapers published before the Civil War. I’m still happy with this decision to go for depth over breadth, but it means that there are lots of papers that I didn’t have a chance to include. I would have really liked to spend some time with Frederick Douglass’ Paper, or the Christian Recorder, but happ…

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The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

…adical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for racism…

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Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

…at led to a boycott of Danish products, attacks on Danish embassies, and a number of deaths. Last month in the New York Times, however, Reza Aslan countered that the controversy over the cartoons has died out and that in any case, there never was any violence over them in the United States. I agree with Aslan that the novelty of the cartoon depictions, which were intended to irritate Muslims, has worn thin by now—the Saudis, to take just one examp…

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How Not To Defend Atheism

…tingly worse, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being representative of atheism, and he told me he would. Yet here we are. There’s a philosopher at the UC Riverside I admire named Eric Schwitzgebel. One of his more popular theories is his theory of jerks, which he defin…

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Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

…ere it started, a number of years ago. [WG]: This is going to sound like a flip question and it’s not a flip question; but Rob, why do we have to have hell? I mean there are people who seem to resent the fact that there would even be an opportunity for some people to enjoy whatever is we call heaven. It’s like they resent that. [RB]: Right, right. It’s very interesting. There is this fascinating letter called First Timothy, where the writer Paul s…

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