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In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

…ng any distinctive rights or obligations: bye-bye to the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the Constitution, etc. They might as well protect us from the “establishment” of widget and the “free exercise” thereof. Both are meaningless, since neither “widget” nor “religion” point to anything specific. Linker, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite tack: he legislates the meaning of “religion” as those particular referents marked by the…

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Paul Ryan Is Like Jesus, But It’s Not What You Think

…arket economics. One of the best examples is the Rev. Robert Sirico of the free market Acton Institute, who released a video attempting to defend his views against Evangelii Gaudium. Best “who, me?” line: “Who is advocating a market without regulations, without law?” On the Eternal Word Television Network program The World Over last week, Bishop Robert Morlino, the bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, discussed a portion of Evangelii Gaudium in which the…

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Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

…ished around the Man as it ignites and burns, once it collapses people are free to surge toward and dance around the pyre.) My nieces puzzled over this for a moment, and soon realized this anonymous individual was indeed shouting “theater” in the midst of a rather “crowded fire.” When they told me this story later that night, I immediately seized on it as the title of what was at the time my dissertation as I thought it spoke brilliantly and provo…

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South Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate Called “Raghead”

…the lead in the four-way Republican race for governor since, one: she’s a woman, and two: she’s an ethnic woman at that. If she were a Democrat, it wouldn’t be sex scandals plaguing her, it would be ongoing jabs at her gender and ethnicity — but since she’s a far right Republican, the attacks have focused more on her sexuality. Knotts, though, makes up for all the kid glove handling of Haley in one fell swoop, especially with his assertion that sh…

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The Mistaken Assumption Behind Employers’ “Right” to Not Cover Contraception

…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…

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Biblical Law in Central Florida House Race

…d mid-November. You can watch the first session of the seminar on-line for free here.   But I already have done that for you. Gothard promotes an integrated world and life view drawn from the Bible, which he claims speaks to all areas of life. Especially prominent are his views on financial matters and marriage and family matters. For example, Gothard teaches that debt is unbiblical and “a hidden judgment of God; debt is always a judgment.” He cla…

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Trump’s Muslim Ban and the History of Stolen Citizenship in America

…a massive expropriation of wealth from each of these communities, as being free and white was tied to land-owning, or capital. To remove any category was to remove citizenship and to steal wealth. Racism has always been profitable, from slavery to Jim Crow—this theft of citizenship and capital simply followed a well-established pattern. The difference between the 1920s and the 2010s is that in the past, racism was out in the open. This administrat…

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Book Burning and the Scapegoating of Islam

…serter, and denier. Therefore they faced a reminder that they too were not free of the sin that leads to the cross, and were in need of conversion. We Are All Betrayer, Deserter, Denier If Heim is right about this, then Jones and Phelps and their respective congregations are symbolically enacting the very thing that the passion stories central to Christianity were intended to repudiate. Where they are called to see the crucified Christ in those wh…

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The Non-Existent Tea Party-Religious Right God Gap

…ek at the Values Voters Summit. Here, I heard a lot of talk about economic freedom, the supposedly free-spending, monstrous, socialist government, and about the wonders of free enterprise. Most people hear that, and they think, what happened to the God talk? These people must be trying to appeal to the largely secular tea parties. But it’s there. While many tea partiers might come to a rally with an entirely secular objection to what they call “bi…

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‘Son Worry’ and the Hypocrisy of the ‘Purity’ Movement

…rry about. It’s unlikely you’re going to be accused of assaulting a young woman on her own front porch with her father presumably sitting inside, shotgun at the ready. The real hypocrisy, of course, is that these religious-right prescriptions were never supposed to apply to their sons, only to their daughters. That their sons should have free rein to let “boys be boys” or to “sow their wild oats” went hand-in-hand with the idea that chaste girls w…

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