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Of God, But Not God: A Methodist Minister Speaks About Church’s Refusal to Open Its Doors to LGBT

…in a whole series of laws, many of which we pay absolutely no attention to today. Such as? There’s a law that says you can’t wear blends of cotton and linen, or wool and linen. Nobody rails against people wearing blends today. There were very specific reasons for those laws that no longer make sense. In order to understand the reasoning behind “no man shall lie with another man” we have to take into account the fact that at that time they didn’t u…

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RDBook: There is Nothing New About the New Atheism

…lorification of man on the mind. Christopher Lasch’s question is as urgent today as it was when he posed it 18 years ago in his book The True and Only Heaven How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once in for all? Reitan raises in separate chapters the key arguments that atheists have used or attacked, including theories of…

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Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

…and they helped create a realignment of forces that continues to plague us today. How does that show itself today? Primarily in the anti-immigrant movement—the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a “White” country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the…

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How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power and Exclusion

…rket. But it does seem that the two opposing traditions have come together today to act as a powerful rhetoric of gratitude as indebtedness. Today we have a thriving self-help industry that churns out a steady stream of books on pop psychology, happiness, and gratitude. How well do these grapple with the issues you’ve raised? I was a little surprised by how little attention is paid to the history of gratitude in the self-help literature. I see my…

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Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

…to produce a child? Well, of course, there are so many more possibilities today in terms reproductive technology than the Torah, Talmud, or our medieval and early modern codes could have imagined! Certainly, some things possible in our world had been sufficiently anticipated by earlier Jews that we have a basis for discussion; there were forms of birth control mentioned in the Talmud, for example. And there are even intimations of the questions r…

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Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake

…lways imagined ourselves in other spaces. We have always imagined mythic escape from the drudgery of our everyday lives. Whereas religion used to be sufficient for most people in their contemplation of supernatural other-spaces, today more and more people rely upon mediated worlds for this sense of voluntary displacement. So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a s…

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No, I Don’t Owe My Yoga Mat to Vivekananda

…ath. Perhaps we rather thank Vivekananda for our yoga mats than an obscure Indian from Nebraska who we know little about and his socially radical disciple or a mystic-sexologist who committed suicide in order to escape a future in an American prison. Perhaps we prefer simpler, happier myths. But the fact is they’re just wrong, as they ignore the power plays and persecution that affected the living bodies of yogis who, if alive today, would certain…

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A Short Theological Take on Why Messianic Jews Are Christians

…istory, there have always been rivulets of Jews who accept Jesus, and that today’s messianics perpetuate these, when the outside monies they now attract started burgeoning only suddenly in the 1970s, as the turn of the millenium neared, with its recurring hope for the Second Coming and even the end of the world.” When, he asks, “in previous history have rivulets of Jewish messianics received such largesse?” He concludes, “Today the mask is coming…

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More Pressure on Obama to Fix His Religious Freedom Legacy

…Vision Memo, has thus attracted a larger coalition. Organizations signing today’s letter include Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, a number of Christian Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, secular, and atheist groups, as well as legal advocates, abortion rights advocates, and LGBT groups. According to the letter, the World Vision Memo is based “on flawed legal analysis and wrongly asserts that R…

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How Not to Oppose the National Day of Prayer

…U.S.C. § 119 from law. But this year the American Humanist Association is promoting an opposition effort that is fundamentally misguided. Rather than call for its elimination, the AHA wants the annual observance to be replaced by a new “National Day of Reason.” According to its official website, a National Day of Reason would, of course, “celebrate reason,” but it would also “raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty…

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