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Domestic Violence Has Nothing To Do With Religion

By Hussein Rashid

…he only one. The last few days have been spent trying to figure out how to help the four children left behind; the two oldest are from a previous marriage and will have some financial support, but the two youngest, 4 and 6, have no one. I cannot fathom the anger, the rage that would result in a beheading. According to my TV, crimes of passion tend to be the most violent, but a beheading is just such a foreign concept, in any context, that it is in…

Faith-Based Initiatives in the Obama Administration?

By Bill Berkowitz

…t, and betrayed the very essence of the faith-based initiative’s charge to help the poor. Politicizing Grant Making: Money to Black Churches Aimed at Converting Democrats Several meetings with Black religious leaders, part of an aggressive strategy by the Republican Party and conservative philanthropy aimed at African-American churches and, through them, black voters—the Democrats’ most loyal constituency, led to a number of black preachers receiv…

Unreasonable Atheists

By Arri Eisen

…the United States.” Now, much of what Harris calls ‘ignorance’ I would call “lack of open discussion and education;” and much of this lack occurs between scientists and people of faith who often simply yell past each other. So, who then could possibly make more sense to help address this ‘epidemic’ than a well-respected scientist who also claims himself among the 100 million evangelical Christians in America? What better person to lead, decide, th…

White Supremacy, Mental Illness, or Society: What’s to Blame for Religious Violence?

By Michael Schulson

…other words, while they help us tell a good story, they don’t necessarily help us understand the full chain of cause-and-effect that leads to violence. Those underlying mechanisms are much harder to identify, because the perpetrators’ statements may not give you a complete picture. Violence can have multiple causes, and the relationships between them can be difficult to identify and unravel. Other challenges emerge when you try to connect individ…

UK Atheist Church Invasion

By Becky Garrison

…appens. If we can get the momentum to get this up and running, then we can help people launch their own services. If we can unite them using one website that we’re calling Sunday Assembly Everywhere, then we can scale it and make it really easy to set it up. Instead of us doing our own thing, our effort can be multiplied a million times over. Launching a crowd-funding campaign to raise £500,000 sounds like megachurch pastor money. Jones: We’re…

From Organized Religion to Organizing Religion: Brian D. McLaren Wants Christians to Be Better

By Peter Laarman

…ntalist way of thinking was related to a deep inner struggle with violence helped me to at least appreciate the “why” behind his convictions. I have to recall Jesus’ words about “not causing one of these little ones to stumble,” or Paul’s counsel about not judging people in disputable matters. For that reason, rather than arguing with people who criticize my work and trying to persuade them I’m right and they’re wrong, I want to be gentle with the…

Mexico’s Religious Conservatives Seek Anti-LGBT Constitutional Amendment, LGBT Activists Defend Secular Government; Cash From Qatar Funds ‘Traditional’ Family Activism Worldwide; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e island.” The couple’s marriage license application was rejected by the Registrar-General last month. Spain: LGBT activists challenge ‘change’ therapy The LGBT group Arcópoli has filed a complaint against Elena Lorenzo Rego, a psychotherapist who offers therapy to help people “change” from homosexual to heterosexual. India: Video aims to help families talk about sexuality The Indian Express reports on the latest episode of a Web series designed t…

Beverly Cleary, Author of the Ramona Series, Understood Children, Shoes, School, Words, and How it Feels to be Heard, or Misunderstood

By Amy Laura Hall

…e dawnzer.” Her parents are confused. Ramona explains the “lee light” will help Beezus see the words. [“Oh say can you see by the dawnzer lee light…”] Beezus figures out the word puzzle and laughs, more with delight than derision. That her parents (barely) refrain from laughing with Beezus at Ramona is a key to their abiding sisterhood. Cleary draws you in to hear Ramona’s feelings and, as a grown-up, to think alongside grown-ups trying not to squ…

Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail

By Peter Laarman

…sophers like Rawls and Habermas: small-scale collaborative forums that can help “overcome the tendency of groups to polarize at the extremes and deadlock.” This is also precisely how I believe interlocutors with sharply differing theo-political views should be attempting to engage one another: in respectful small-scale conversations, not by tossing fusillades across the barricades. It interests me that the very same Anglo-Protestant tradition I f…

Untethering Conscience From Religion: An Interview with Louisa Thomas

By Jeremy Kessler

…bs, his failure to help, his sense that even in the ways in which he could help he was making things worse, and his growing sense that his liberal friends would talk about how it was all very tragic but would ultimately side with the capitalists against the workers. But the First World War was what really pushed Norman to become a socialist. He started connecting what he saw in the tenements to what was going on around the world, to imperialism an…