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Two Wars and No Peace in Sight: The Role of Faith-Based Pacifism

…e is structural violence. Certainly, there is physical violence such as spouse or child abuse. But structural forms of violence systematically affect whole groups of people. This type of violence occurs when structures—such as an authoritarian regime, a patriarchal system, or racial segregation laws—limit a group’s opportunities and life chances. Such structures do violence to people by systematically oppressing them, by treating them in a degradi…

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Did Jesus Help Ghanaian Women with Birth Control?

…ive use amongst women of the Kassena-Nankana ethnic group in Ghana. She focuses on a study of contraceptive use and childbearing amongst women who attended evangelical churches: To their amazement, they found that female Christian converts were three times as likely to use family planning as women who retained their traditional African faith, and had significantly smaller families. The churches certainly didn’t promote family planning. But, despit…

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God in the Inauguration: JFK, Bush, and Obama

…a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner “Freedom Now”—they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb…

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Right Wing Christians and Radical Feminists Form an Odd (Transphobic) Couple

…provision, even against blatant offenders like North Carolina’s infamous House Bill 2. But that didn’t thwart an outsized reaction led by Texas and nearly two dozen other Republican-run states, which collectively sued the federal government for daring to use its education agency to advise schools nationwide on emerging best practices. A district judge ruled in favor of those states and blocked the guidance in August. Given the arrival of a command…

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How to Slow Down the Rush to War: What Obama Should Do About Syria

…t crisis in Syria, in which the U.N. is blocked from acting decisively because Russia and China will use their vetoes against any action that imperils Assad, President Obama should call a conclave of the world’s other countries, all of them, and let them together decide on what should be done with regard to saving the people of Syria from its rogue regime. The specific use of chemical weapons should be referred to the World Court for possible tria…

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That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

…nley McChrystal, acknowledged recently that we are losing ground there because (surprise) ordinary Afghans appear to resent our casual killing in their country. In view of this you might think Gen. McChrystal would be worried about the impact of so many mercenaries; if he his, he is doing nothing to change it. But here is the part of Glanz’s piece I particularly like. He quotes Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies…

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From Engravings to Ultrasounds: The Politics of Imaging the Womb

…In comparison, Hunter betrayed no interest in the gender of the children housed in the uteruses he anatomized. Access to living images of the fetus facilitates our own obsession with gendering babies, even before their birth. But imaging technology also introduces difficult questions. Twenty-five states have passed laws regulating the use of ultrasound imaging when a woman seeks an abortion. In Louisiana, Texas, and Wisconsin, the law requires an…

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Park 51 and RLUIPA, Or, Conservatives Hoisted On Their Petard

…the Interfaith Alliance’s State of Belief radio show, once again religious freedom means freedom for everybody, not just the people we like. That ought to be an obvious statement, but apparently it takes some spelling out for modern conservatives. It would be nice to say that spelling it out might have some effect, but movement conservatives have demonstrated anything these days, it’s that they aren’t much interested in consistency, or logic, or e…

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How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

…ey have this capacity. They think listening is simply waiting for you to pause so I can come in. Speaking of listening, you use stories from your teaching experience to such great effect. It sounds as if teaching for you has been a laboratory… Absolutely. That is exactly the word I would use. And you teach courses in religion, spirituality, so you encounter every kind of opinion. I was so interested in that encounter you describe with the dogmatic…

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Crying Witch: Learning From the O’Donnell “Dabbling” Debacle

…ent, as old as the notion of a country devoted to the impossible ideals of freedom from the governmental establishment of religion and freedom for citizens’ religious expression—might benefit from continued examination of the various afterlives of this strange date. Certainly, on the brink of Halloween, with cartoon “witches” popping up all over, the reverberations from O’Donnell’s claims emphasize how difficult it is for those who self-identify r…

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