Religion Dispatches
…ds in many such outfits, being early forays into American civic life by a relatively young community). More importantly, this got me thinking about whether Muslim organizations might be said to similarly highjack the “M-word” (a new TV series?). While I haven’t heard of such heavy-handed measures being employed in Muslim organizations, I think there is certainly an analogous expectation of assent to a minimal standard of doctrinal orthodoxy. Is th…
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…ined in an interview. “And so I didn’t make the title ‘The Life of Pi’: I deliberately left out the definite article. That would have denoted a single life.” Similarly, the 1998 thriller Pi revolves around Max, a mathematician who tries desperately to find an equation for the universe, a pattern in the seeming randomness. One author even points out that, if you convert the Hebrew letters in one of the names of God to their numerical equivalents an…
Read More…sing about a brokered convention, and being willing to serve. These are merely code words to try to rally her flagging base of supporters to give money to SarahPac. To push back on the HBO movie, SarahPac commissioned a video, “Game change we can believe in,” a highlight reel of Palin on the 2008 campaign trail. Of course, the Pac is fundraising on the movie, hoping to get $20.12 for the 2012 race. While Rick Santorum has taken Palin’s 2008 role o…
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…ience, and then you add to that DNA, which has been called things like the code of codes, the holy grail. We give it this kind of supernatural significance. So, I think it’s a combination of being a society that values data, being a society that equates progress with scientific development, and being a society that thinks that genetics—in part because DNA comes from you, from us, from we—is the ultimate information, the ultimate data. It’s like th…
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…government, without abdicating authority God has given the church exclusively.”) Religious liberals who protest Beck’s theological heresies would do well to recognize the dangers of his other heresies as well. It’s not enough to defend the Bible from Glenn Beck; liberals will also need to defend the role of government in creating a social safety net and a regulatory structure that protects and enhances the economic lives of its citizens. While Be…
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…poll, 60% of Republicans believe that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Meanwhile, here on RD, Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, concluded the following about the GOP from her on-the-ground observation of the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority convention: “This party—or at least the hard rock of its base represented in this gathering—is moving to…
Read More…known for attacks on Scientology, decided to send a message to the Catholic Church by shutting down the official Vatican website (still not responding as of this posting). What are the Church’s misdeeds, according to these code crusaders? They go back to the selling of indulgences in the 16th century. And more recently, of course, there’s the Church’s interference in Italy’s domestic politics. (Not just Italy, we’d have to say.) – The Eds. …
Read More…n, and even the born-again George W. Bush. But it wasn’t Christianity, or religious faith itself in general, that helped make Republican voters more likely to be duped by fake news than their Democratic compatriots. (There were, and continue to be, lots of progressive or liberal people of faith.) Instead, susceptibility to fake news has its particular historical origin in Christian fundamentalism’s rejection of expert elites. To see this connectio…
Read More…s of the embryo and fetus and there is broad agreement on what is called “delayed ensoulment.” That was code for saying that the fetus does not attain to personal status until it is well formed. Early miscarriages could not be named or given religious funerals. Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas held that the early fetus had the moral status of a plant, and that not even God could infuse a spiritual, person-making soul until the fetus was develop…
Read More…rrant your urgent attention.” Setting aside the fact that Bachmann et al. rely entirely on Gaffney—who has been dismissed by fellow conservatives as a “crazy bigot”—for their unsubstantiated claim that Abedin has Brotherhood ties, their supposed proof of the Brotherhood’s theocratic ambitions in the United States is a fabrication. For her proof, Bachmann cites an exhibit from the US government’s prosecution in the Holy Land Foundation terror finan…
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