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Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

…mblazoned in our cultural consciousness. On November 18, 1978, the largest number of American civilian lives was lost due to a single non-natural disaster—a sad distinction Jonestown would hold until September 11, 2001.  In Stories from Jonestown, the most recent addition to the Jonestown library, Leigh Fondakowski has compiled the numerous interviews that she conducted in order to write her play, The People’s Temple, which ran at the Berkeley Rep…

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Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

…te between religion and cult, and how do you feel your personal definition compares and contrasts with public perception of the two? I believe that the common assumption is that religions are older, established organizations that have been assimilated into mainstream society. Cults, on the other hand, are commonly viewed as newer, informal organizations that are separate from mainstream society. My personal definition of a cult focuses on a number

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Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

…awing and releasing methane. Sound alarming? Not when we get to data point number 2. 2. Basically, we are not alarmed enough. Not by a long shot. Rather, in concluding their analysis of climate data, an international group of scientists write, “We have summarized predictions of a ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health, and climate-disruption upheavals (including looming massive migrations) and resource conflicts this century…we conten…

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New Mormon Anti-Gay Policy Sparks Mass Exodus From Church; Christian AID Workers in Africa Refuse to Help Gay Refugees; Ukraine Rejects, Then Accepts EU-Required Gay Rights Law; Global LGBT Recap

…he church needs a Stonewall.” Hong Kong: Catholic Bishop Defends Cardinal, Compares Homosexuality to Drug Abuse Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, defending a political letter from Cardinal John Tong opposing marriage equality and anti-discrimination protections, compared gays to drug addicts, reports the Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers: “The church doesn’t have any enemy and it wouldn’t criticize anyone,” sai…

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My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement

…the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land,…

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Is Obama the Antichrist? Why Armageddon Stands Between the President and the Evangelical Vote

…ts, a hidden “plan of the ages” emerges. According to their decryptions, a number of events will transpire just before the apocalypse. These include a return of the Jews to Palestine, a decline in morals, religious apostasy, and the consolidation of independent nations into one super-state led by a seemingly benevolent leader who is actually the Antichrist. During the last 100 years, evangelicals have witnessed more and more evidence of these prop…

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Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

…14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch. Whether the dip in the number of bills introduced is attributable to Covid-19, the toxicity of the Project Blitz brand, or some other combination of factors is hard to say. In 2020 and 2021, 24 of the bills introduced involved displays of In God We Trust in public buildings or on license plates, while 16 were largely about religious exemptions and state versions of the federal Religious Freedom R…

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The Resurgence of Right-Wing Anti-Semitic Conspiracism Endangers All Justice Movements

…t the white nationalist ideology that inspired him is also implicated in a number of other recent attacks, including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, the killing of 49 Muslim worshippers last month in New Zealand, and the 2015 murder of nine African-American Christian worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina. In Earnest’s twisted worldview, “every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race,” and he…

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Global Anti-Gay Forces Plot Against ‘Satanic’ Equality Movement

…ehova’s Witness and who has refused to provide services to gay couples was compared by Communities Minister Stephen Williams to the owner of a Bed & Breakfast turning away people for being black or Irish. Mr O’Reilly told PinkNews he was upset at the refusal, saying: “We would understand if her company was solely aimed at her religious group – but it’s not. She does not refuse anyone due to their religion yet she is quite happy to refuse us becaus…

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Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

…exuals represent approximately .25 to 1 percent of the US population. That number does not include the transgender people who haven’t undergone sex reassignment surgery (a process many people call “the transition”), so the number of transgender-identified people is likely much higher. The term “transgender” encompasses anyone with a gender identity that is different from his or her birth sex. A transgender person could be someone who just cross-dr…

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