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How We Got to Super: Grant Morrison’s Visionary Gnosticism

…awesome. And that was just the beginning of the wonders. There were the decoders and spy cameras (ordered one), the martial arts secrets advertised in martial arts comics (yep, ordered ’em—don’t mess with me), even underwater sea monkeys (nope—drew the metaphysical line about right there). Okay, the latter ads were peddling freeze-dried brine shrimp, but we didn’t know that. And on and on it went, breathlessly, at the back of a single 20-cent com…

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Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

…lways go back to the same people, but this does a tremendous disservice to promoting understanding of this community as it exists today.” As Fish sees it, journalists “don’t quite know how to talk about this elephant in the room: the fact that almost a third of Americans are no longer part of an organized religious tradition,” and no legacy media outlet does a particularly good job. To speak of this significant percentage of the population as mere…

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King as Inspiration, Not Guide

…ou and me, he was buffeted by circumstances he did not choose. He made the best choices that he could (most of the time) given the circumstances, acting the way everyone acts: from compulsion, from character and disposition, from habits that had been cultivated over a lifetime. The reasons came later, after the fact, when the heat of the moment had passed, and in calm repose he could reflect and give an account, retrospectively, of why he did what…

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Ebola and Us: The American Roots of Liberia’s Trauma

…ship already-converted African-Americans back to Africa and wish them the best of luck. The work of the Colonization Society entailed what we now call ethnic cleansing, which the less high-minded among its founders understood full well. The Rev. Robert Finley, a Southern Presbyterian associate of Mills, made the case for Black removal in a letter to a friend in 1816:”Could they be sent back to Africa, a three-fold benefit would arise: we should b…

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Catholic Healthcare Is Not the Enemy

…re or that no Catholic hospital ever denies treatment in pregnancy that is best for a woman. Nor am I suggesting that the Catholic bishops are the only adversaries to worry about. I am, for example, offended by the CHA’s claim that it needs to be exempt from the contraceptive mandate and cannot provide insurance coverage. I’m offended because Catholic hospitals can and have provided such insurance to employees before. But I refuse to accept that C…

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An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

…been baptized into the faith at 15, my formative years were shaped by the best of the black preaching tradition. In pure awe, I watched you hold congregations in the palm of your hand with rhetorical flourishes, giving a beat-down-people strength to live another day. Your words helped to re-constitute an assaulted black self—with respectability, dignity and self-determination. I studied how you mounted the sacred desk. The way that you ‘took and…

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RDBook: The End of the World As We Know It

…Cory Doctorow’s “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”—probably the anthology’s best story—it’s a synchronistic series of unconnected acts of terrorism. The most original set-up is in Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds,” in which a virus wipes out the human race’s ability to use and comprehend language. Elsewhere the cause of the apocalypse is ambiguous—something best illustrated in Gene Wolfe’s “Mute,” in which two children watch news reports about a mys…

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Dan Savage and Brian Brown Did It 

…ssive,” and says he overlooks the majority of biblical scholars. He’s also particularly peeved by Savage’s description of biblical perspectives of slavery: “If we want to have a debate let’s do it civilly,” he says. “Let’s look at the best scripture scholar. Sam Harris is not one of the best scripture scholars.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say someone who invites you into their home is lacking civility when they quote a writer you don’t like. Check…

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“We All We Got”: The Black Church As an Oasis in Baltimore’s Food Deserts

…time to change churches. In Baltimore, symbolic gestures on the pulpit are best complemented by concrete actions in our streets. Their hands forced, some of Baltimore’s black churches have stepped up to meet this demand. Prayer walks have been held by congregations at the same Penn-North intersection where CNN and others incessantly broadcasted images of a torched CVS as if it were a dying human being. In warmer months, New Bethlehem Baptist Churc…

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Progressive & Religious

…that “religion poisons everything” on the other. I firmly believe that the best solution to bad religion is good religion. Given the ugly and divisive side of religion that has been so prominent in American politics, I understand the appeal of these neo-atheist books. They’ve been at the top of the best-seller lists (in the category of religion no less!) because they have tapped into a backlash. However, they make the mistake of rejecting all reli…

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