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“Reconciliation” With Indigenous People is Comforting For Many Canadians, But is a Christian Concept Up To The Task?

By Pamela Klassen and Joseph Wiebe

…ues of injustice, racism, and prejudice in Canada. If settlers in North America want to respect Indigenous spirituality then it has to begin by tackling the question of land. Swampy, virgin, and cheap Canadians who tell stories about land in a public setting can no longer do so while ignoring that they (we) are treaty people—that Canadians live in nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples. As treaty people, part of the responsibility of s…

Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…tween the bunnies-and-eggs version of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always con…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…

Hookers for Jesus: Sex and Salvation on the Strip

By Nicole Greenfield

…ber, cable viewers got a taste of what it might be like to minister in “America’s prostitution capital” in the three-part series Hookers: Saved on the Strip. The show, which aired on the crime-and mystery-focused network Investigation Discovery, profiled Lobért and Hookers for Jesus and, in true reality docudrama fashion, the personal stories of three women who have been “saved.” In a segment she calls “Saturday Night Love,” Lobért brings her “tak…

Memo to David Brooks: Francis Is Not Naïve For Criticizing Capitalism

By Peter Laarman

…credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign energy sources, having failed to turn to renewables while mindlessly pumping more cheap petroleum into our veins. Like other critics of the new encyclical, Brooks chalks up the pope’s hostility to capitalism as the product of naivete or perhap…

NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

By Nicole Greenfield

…n North Carolina. Referring to Bakker’s theological “feel-good stance” as “cheap grace,” Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League attributed Bakker’s preaching of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free…

Are American Christians “Persecuted”?

By Eric C. Miller

…hey don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed. At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake: Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now? I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Ameri…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…raeli left has always been more critical of the Israeli government than American Jews. “I think American Jews continue to still have a desire and a belief and a strong sense that Israel is a land of peace and does want peace,” said Grater. He added that American Jews have “blinders,” and that “we have a hard time believing” that “this great country that’s been a dream of our ancestry for thousands of years really might be doing things we disapprov…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…N and editorially it generally mirrors EWTN’s point of view. Crux, like America, aimed for a middle ground, but it was also supported by a secular news organization with the financial and editorial muscle of the Globe behind it. It incorporated in-depth reporting on the American church from Michael O’Loughlin, columns from Margery Eagan, and Rome reporting from Allen and Ines San Martin. The Boston Globe’s reputation for fierce honesty in its chur…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…forced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three other inmates in my cell, including a guy from Paraguay who snored louder than anyone I’ve ever heard. Two of the guys were in b…