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Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

…Such changes in declared identification have huge implications for society today. And yet the import and meaning of these changes are likely more nuanced than how they often are portrayed. A mouse pad decorated with a school of ancient “ichthus” Christian symbols (and a contemporary “evangellyfish” headed in the opposite direction). Image via Zazzle.com. A few examples: Self-reported church attendance is roughly the same today as in the 1940’s and…

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Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

…to produce a child? Well, of course, there are so many more possibilities today in terms reproductive technology than the Torah, Talmud, or our medieval and early modern codes could have imagined! Certainly, some things possible in our world had been sufficiently anticipated by earlier Jews that we have a basis for discussion; there were forms of birth control mentioned in the Talmud, for example. And there are even intimations of the questions r…

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Global LGBT Recap

…ght. If anything, the struggle for gay rights in so many African countries today tells us about a continent still battling the demons of colonialism, a continent that is still in the process of negotiating an identity – as articulated, again, through the lens of the colonial master. Among the greatest challenges many African democracies face today are the continued existence of one-party states and the lack of strong civil institutions. And, in th…

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What Will Orthodox ‘Republicanity’ Look Like?

…what is literally unbelievable. As Laderman suggests, we may be witnessing today what a politics of Republicanity grounded in the necessary absurdity of belief will look like. And it is not always a pretty picture. But it’s important to emphasize just how Christian the culture of argument currently embodied in one portion of the GOP appears to be. Or rather, just how Tertullian a portion of this emerging Republican theology has become. To make one…

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Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

…obally, stripped people of a practice vital to their health and community. Today, some researchers report that group drumming reduces anxiety and depression, increases social resilience and boosts the immune system, along with other physical and mental health benefits. “So this thing that was inherently happening in all tribal lineages was healing the very things that were hurting people,” says Pasquale Mateus, adding that they didn’t need science…

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Why Has the Critique of Hypocrisy Run Out of Steam?

…ss of pretense. Our old friend self-deception But the hypocrisy we witness today may not be so much acts of pretense and public false performance as self-deception. In Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations, Béla Szabados and Eldon Soifer suggest that our perception of hypocrisy has shifted in modern times. If Biblical and Medieval thinkers saw hypocrisy primarily as a matter of pretense, of the difference between the inner morality and outward perform…

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The Americans Season Finale: Teach Your Parents Well

…tinues. “But, Paige, this is your most defiant act of protest yet, because today, you make a public declaration that you are a child of God. Are you ready to be renamed and reclaimed in the name of Jesus?” Paige’s answer? “Absolutely.” A few episodes later, after she does a little more snooping and Elizabeth gently begins to try to tell her about their lives by taking her on a field trip to an impoverished, largely African-American neighborhood wh…

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Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

…traditionally varies according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, in order to promote tourism. Of the various policies implemented by Chinese governmental agencies in recent years two have been the greatest source of friction between the clergy and the government. The control of the number of monks and nuns in monastic institutions, and the implementation of “patriotic re-education.” Since it is largely these policies that have brought the clergy int…

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Evangelical Groundhog Day: The ‘Times’ Identifies the ‘Religious Fervor in the American Right’ — Around Four Decades Late

…capitalism and the military industrial complex and bore no resemblance to today’s praise songs. What did my friends and I do when we saw the photo of Jerry Falwell? We laughed. He seemed a buffoon, and we couldn’t believe that anyone would ever take him seriously. We had no idea what lay ahead. This all came back to me because of another article in the New York Times—a piece published on April 6—“The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right…

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Does Religion Justify the Murder of Troy Davis? [Updated]

…eligious traditions. There are bloody, vindictive religious traditions (as today’s not-so-new atheists insist on reminding us), and there are those which soften the human tendency toward vengeance and violence. Religion does not have the answer, because it has all the answers, the right and the wrong. Religion is less a glossary of terms (justice means this, righteousness that) than a grammar, a framework for moral reasoning. It is a language in w…

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