Religion Dispatches
…King was a Personalist: when distinguishing between moral laws and social codes, he believed (in theory at least) that dignity, respect, choice, equality, and subjectivity were the moral rights of all human beings. However, these rights were stymied by social codes, which led to all sorts of disparities, including but not limited to racial and economic injustice, which King argued were morally evil. Thus, King’s dream was a public censure of Amer…
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…his head, killing him. Cain and Abel’s remarkable argument is little known today, but it is not a mere blip on the radar of biblical interpretation. It exists in different versions in other Targum manuscripts, including fragments found in the Cairo Geniza, showing that it was discussed, revised, and transmitted across Jewish communities. And it is representative of a concern with justice we can see in many other texts where Jewish interpreters gra…
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…cle is not about that book, even though it is about that sentence. Rather, today marks the day, 150 years ago, that Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, a book that revolutionized how we view the world. Darwin’s theory of natural selection as an explanation of evolutionary processes is the foundation of all of modern biology. At its heart, the theory is elegantly simple: individual creatures with traits best suited to their environment…
Read More…e politics that has shaped many of us makes what we say very irrelevant to today’s issues. I think a good part of the church is in denial as to how this country has really changed. I never heard of this Dearborn Awakening event that happened until I read your piece today, but I want to offer an apology for this speaker that lied and confused people. I offer this as a Christian and student of the Word that is called by God to obey and not simply kn…
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…urately, lie and obfuscate, all to propose the end times can be mapped out today, which is cool, because you’ve already got all these ridiculous maps. So why not, I don’t know, invade a country preemptively? One cannot insist on innocuous analysis when one’s last chapter is ‘yes, Islam is evil, but Muslims are not.’ While Muslims might be too stupid to know Islam is evil—sound familiar?—we can rescue them from their ignorance—sound familiar? Thi…
Read More…nt guarantees equal protection to fertilized eggs. At his press conference today, Santorum alluded to reproduction and procreation by praising the family as “the moral enterprise that is America,” and by specifically thanking the 19 Kids and Counting Duggars for campaigning for him. It might have sounded like a standard political homage to wholesome family life, but to anyone who knows Santorum’s views, it was an homage to uber-fertility. As Kathr…
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…ours, recorded four albums, and performed 248 sold-out shows in Las Vegas. Today she’s worth more than $60 million. While everyone knows about Spears, few know—and even fewer discuss—the role religion has played in her life. Like Katy Perry, who was once a Contemporary Christian Music artist, Spears has deep roots in white American evangelicalism. Born and raised in the Bible Belt and surrounded by conservative evangelical Protestants, Spears grew…
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…lgamation of white supremacy and American Christianity that lives among us today. These unsettling connections among white supremacy, white Christianity and support for the former president are not confined to the extremists who attacked the Capitol. There is a strong correlation between voting for Trump in the 2020 election and median scores on the Racism Index—a composite measure of attitudes about systemic racism I developed in my recent book,…
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…bullies within the fringe of his own party?” she said. “What we have seen today is the Turnbull government have overturned the decisions that their own government took just a matter of months ago.” The Greens’ sexuality spokesman, Senator Robert Simms, said it was “clear that Malcolm Turnbull has thrown LGBTI young people under the bus today by bowing to the rightwing backbench bullies and stripping back the Safe Schools program”. Meanwhile, the…
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…large role in the overall health disparities faced by communities of color today. Women of color have the highest rates of unintended pregnancy, abortion, and maternal mortality, all of which have taken a toll on the psychological, economic, and social vitality of these communities. Moreover, as abortion clinics across the country close due to the conservative attack on abortion rights, women of color are harmed disproportionately. Clinic closings…
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