Religion Dispatches
…led by the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby. The Zeitgeist website lists Nation writer William Greider — a longtime critic of the Fed’s policies from the left — as an “information source,” particularly his 1989 tome, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. But the list is otherwise populated by right-wing conspiracy theorists. In Secrets, Greider maintains: The conspiracy-minded critics exaggerated the importance o…
Read More…he essentials for spending a day in meditation, prayer, and gratitude: my “lists” of people to remember to pray for, my Qur’an, my zhikr beads, and my wits. The night before Arafat, I considered it to be a warm-up. We are supposed to be focused on ibadah, thinking about Allah, repenting for our shortcomings, reading Qur’an, meditating, praying. For some reason, I took this as the opportunity to organize our motley crew and said, “We have no fard (…
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…cy. While the local paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette historically has enlisted King in its daily defense of libertarianism, this year’s editorialist apparently gave up, simply consigning King Day to an apolitical celebration. Yes, we can all dream, and become whatever we want to be, so the day should be for a celebration of anyone’s dreams. “Regardless your politics, your opinions, take a moment today to reflect on the meaning of having a dream…
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…Through the left door you can “confess,” offering your sins to whoever is listening; behind the closed door you can “absolve” any sins received; and at the far side you can “reflect,” considering the shared confessions of others, conveniently arranged like a pinball machine’s top-ten list. The service requires that every user play both Sinner and Saint, and a novice is granted five bits of each one’s currency: Five Horns for confessing, and five…
Read More…ulations to which we have been exposed during the past year.” First on his list of such tribulations, and made damningly ironic in this, the Vatican’s self-styled Year for Priests, is the fact that “in this year of all years and to a degree we could not have imagined, we came to know of the abuse of minors committed by priests who twist the sacrament into its antithesis, and under the mantle of sacred protection profoundly wound human persons in t…
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…quad. In a video by the outfit (who, by the way, “abhor violence”) Santa’s list of “heinous crimes against the Lord our God” are read out before the execution. Among them “idolatry” for replacing himself with Jesus Christ, and for being a “stumbling block to parents who lie to their children that you exist to bring them gifts.” Then, before the violence begins, Santa is told: “We would plead that the Lord have mercy on your soul, but you have no s…
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…parkly lights can make any dive feel like home. So, Cheers has to make the list for great Christmas episodes. Limiting myself to only one Saturday Night Live sketch, the best would have to be Alec Baldwin’s Schewddy Balls. As much as Christmas is about humor, it’s also about the warm and fuzzies. Nothing delivers the warm and fuzzies (along with pubescent awkwardness) better than The Wonder Years. Speaking of awkward, the most awkwardl…
Read More…upports “illegal immigration” and “socialist health care;” in sum, “a socialist wish list.” After the Senate failed to break the Republican filibuster of the DREAM Act on Saturday, the UMC’s General Board of Church and Society put out the following statement from Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference: Though the Senate failed to supply the necessary leadership to provide humane and effective solutions to the badly broken immigr…
Read More…ools, abortion, homosexual behavior, lawlessness, etc.)” AiG does not just promote a peculiar religious view about human origins, it promotes a consistent, coherent, integrated world and life view in which the bible speaks to all areas of life. There is no neutrality in this system and AiG cannot consistently promote its own worldview and hire nonbelievers, Muslims, gays and lesbians, divorced people, unsubmissive women (this list gets pretty long…
Read More…scenes in Naples, Italy. A Dallas, Texas megachurch pastor is compiling a list of business that fail to recognize Christmas and instead settle for ‘Happy Holidays.’ Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma is taking a stand in the war on Christmas by trying to keep the “Christ” in “Christmas parade.” And the three wise men may have been from China. Always striving to sink to ever lower levels of human decency, the Westboro Baptist Church says it will pic…
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