Religion Dispatches
…nation itself. To put it simply: hell was not antithetical to, but rather part and parcel of, the modern nation-building project in the US. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I wanted to reach both a scholarly and a general audience, so I tried to keep the jargon to a minimum and the historiographical discussions to the notes. Since hell is a topic that remains live to this day, I also envisioned an audience that included ever…
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…g beautiful is being spoiled.” It still makes us angry and we find it very painful to watch. The lack on our part of any show of hatred or enmity has been attested by all the witnesses examined by the defence. And by the evidence of our characters. In addition to all the other character statements, I’d like you to consider the findings of the psychiatric and psychological tests the investigator ordered me to undergo in detention. The expert’s find…
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…lar anti-Muslim sentiment and disinformation in India as well. In previous pandemics, particularly Ebola, preparations of the dead were seen as a leading cause of viral spread. While care should certainly be taken with the handling of bodies that have passed from Covid, the risk of viral spread is limited, and cremation is not necessary. The continued practice of forced cremation represents a violation of human rights and religious freedom. As the…
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…” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithfulness no longer present even among the faithful. They ask about the complex emotional lives of orcas and the communi…
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…s from him, or reject him outright. Many elected officials are taking door number one. Paul Ryan, among others, is taking door two. That might explain some of his recent rhetoric on poverty: it could be that he’s staking out a position as a kinder, gentler Republican than that nasty blowhard from Manhattan. That certainly would give vulnerable Republican candidates cover to differentiate themselves from Trump. Maybe that way they can survive the w…
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…—a designation some Nones also find distasteful because it makes religious participation the basis for identification rather than… rather than what? “Even ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheist’ carry a lot of cultural baggage that I just don’t want to take on,” explained an undergraduate at a liberal arts college in Ohio who periodically joins fellow students at a Friends meeting across from campus. He reports that he prays “sometimes” when he’s faced with a dif…
Read More…entions while it went around the world basically crushing everybody in its path. And these first Christians took that military propaganda of a good news, of another city that Caesar had vanquished, and they used it to talk about Jesus, who they believed was the true Lord, who said there’s a better way to be in the world and that’s the way of sacrificial love and humble service. So if that’s what we mean by Good News, I’m all about it. [WG]: I unde…
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…ious faiths or employ persons of different religious faiths when running a parochial school. Indeed, this was never the Departments’ intention in connection with the 2011 amended interim final rules or the 2012 final rules.” (emphasis added) In other words, the administration claims it never intended to deprive a religious organization of an exemption if it was operationally connected to a church but served and employed people of different faiths….
Read More…r convinced that it means they’re low-status males; There is a non-trivial number of human beings who are unrepentant daughters and/or fallopian tube havers and/or cardigan wearers; There was a Republican president in recent memory who had two daughters; There are social conservatives in other quarters trying to be seen as the ones who care about the value of daughters. One can only assume that NRO folks ran these scenarios and determined none of…
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…it’s also worth using some caution in understanding its significance and impact. While his campaign is trying to create an aura of evangelical inevitability, the WORLD magazine (unscientific) survey of evangelical leaders, for example, still shows Cruz running behind Marco Rubio for support among evangelical elites. Although the Texas meeting was off the record, the big names who were revealed are of the type that have strong name recognition amon…
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