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Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

…rent. Justice is meant to be impersonal, balanced, and fair to both the accuser and the accused. Revenge is red-blooded, vindicating, even pleasurable: think of the phrases “sweet revenge” and “just desserts.” When we have been wronged, our inclination is to blame and punish out of all proportion to the offense, reacting with what Locke called “the passionate heats” of our will. There’s some evidence that even thinking about revenge activates the…

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Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

…ry becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from a Deseret News listicle, “20 companies with religious roots.” Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any o…

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2012 Presidential Hopefuls: God Game is On

…ed into the “founding principles,” “Judeo-Christian” foundation, and other code, but they did more. They wept; they told stories about soldiers and family members; they evoked imagery of mountains climbed and enemies vanquished. Mitt Romney, though? Not so much. Speaking directly after Pence, who since the inaugural Values Voters Summit in 2006, has always invoked the language of the religious right base, Romney was at a disadvantage. He was borin…

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Santorum Spokesperson Confuses “Radical Environmentalism” with “Radical Islamic” Policies with “Theological Secularism”

…ooled by Santorum’s defense that he believes Obama when the president says he’s a Christian. Listen to the world salad Santorum and Stewart dropped onto the national airwaves. Anyone steeped in the “Christian worldview” (including Stewart’s old boss Bachmann) would fully understand that code as “Obama doesn’t govern from a ‘Christian worldview.’ And you know what that means: he must be a secularist, or an Islamist, or some other enemy of Christian…

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Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend

…eated last week in the Senate. But there are reasons why it should be. The new Secretary of the Army, John McHugh, came to the Pentagon after serving as the representative of New York’s 23rd District, where last month conservative activists forced the Republican running for McHugh’s old seat, Dede Scozzafava, out of the race for being insufficiently conservative. McHugh’s own culture war credentials are solid, earning him kudos from religious righ…

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Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

…ogressive Satanic groups. These kinds of fractures are extremely common in new religious movements, but they are also painful for those involved. In covering this split, I have tried to honor the stories of all my interview subjects, but some may feel I wasn’t fair to one side or another. What alternative title would you give the book? The Devil and the First Amendment How do you feel about the cover? I like it a lot. There was a lot of anxiety ab…

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Should I Scream and Shout, Should I Speak of Love?: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 2

…ving the bored teenage souls of Madeline and her friend Lisa, somewhere in New York. Down the hall, my parents are asleep. It’s past midnight, and I know, somehow, that I’m the only kid in my chicken-coop suburb beholding this miraculous visitation, wondrous as the presentation of the hermaphrodite in Fellini’s Satyricon. To be sure, Bowie’s a freak—code for “fag” among the real-life Jeff Spicolis in my junior high class, righteous dudes whose ide…

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Brazilian Evangelicals Launch ‘Sin-Free’ (Read: Gay-Free) Version of Facebook

…l: Evangelicals launch ‘sin-free’ – ie gay-free – version of Facebook Pink News reports, “Brazilian Evangelicals have launched their own ‘sin-free’ version of Facebook, which is founded on love and acceptance – unless you’re gay.” FaceGloria reportedly attracted more than 100,000 users in its first month. South Korea: Gay couple sues government for marriage recognition In South Korea, where we reported last week that anti-gay Christians had failed…

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‘Manufactured’ Smear Campaign Attempts to Intimidate Church ‘Fasting From Whiteness’— It Didn’t Work

…s that have been the targets of extremism. It’s been extremely helpful. I knew right away to take this very seriously. I knew right away to document every message that came in. I knew right away to contact both our local law enforcement as well as federal law enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. I’ve learned a lot from this experience, and our work to help prepare other congregations will be much stronger because of it….

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Dear President Bush

…Texas) instead of getting to work. And then with black people floating on New Orleans’ streets you said you couldn’t wait to chill on the racist Trent Lott’s new porch. It made me wonder if Kanye West was right. Do you really care about black people (or poor people of any color)? God’s Kingdom is a kingdom of all nations and colors. Hurricane Katrina, and the government’s response to it, demonstrated that the United States clearly is not in many…

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