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Bobby Jindal Squares Packing Heat with Jesus

By Welton Gaddy

…government becomes involved in religion, we should expect distortions and problems that can compromise its integrity. The founders of our nation knew the reality of that development well and sought to prevent it. It’s a crying shame that contemporary leaders have either forgotten or chosen to ignore it. Interestingly, the Louisiana law entrusts the decision about allowing concealed weapons in houses of worship to the leader of each respective hou…

No Presidential Magic When it Comes to Oil Spill

By Gordon D. Newby

…over again we begin by looking to the president as the solution to all our problems, and we end up believing he’s the source of all our problems.” This got me thinking about other figures in power in the past, their reactions to disasters, and the consequences of their actions. One was the biblical King David. In the portion of Rabbinic tradition called the Gemara, or Rabbinic teaching, the story is told (Succah 53a) that King David was excavating…

When Satire is Redundant

By Holly Welker

…fy) or “Relief Society Counselor Asks Sisters to Cultivate ‘More Appealing Problems’” (based on a woman I knew who complained about how she disliked helping people with “unappealing” problems—like there are really any other kind) or “MTC Fashion Advisor Calls Scriptures ‘Great Accessory’” (because the fashion and makeup classes sister missionaries had to attend at the Missionary Training Center were so painfully inane). People are sometimes surpri…

The Devil Stole Rod Parsley’s Money

By Sarah Posner

…ublicly. Read more here or in my book. I first wrote about Parsley’s legal problems less than a year after he was credited with helping George W. Bush win the 2004 election, by getting voters out for Ohio’s gay marriage ban — voters who presumably pulled the lever for Bush in big numbers. (Although we haven’t heard much politicking from Parsley lately, one of his big cheerleaders at the time was the now seemingly omnipresent Bishop Harry Jackson.)…

Will Sisters Save the Catholic Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…ts and threats of lawsuits involving the Pope himself guarantee that these problems will not be resolved for a generation or more. Efforts by the Vatican to claim that the US Catholic bishops don’t work for them, and that the 1962 guidelines they issued did not mean that the bishops should hush up criminal activity, will be tough sells in US courts of law. Institutional Catholicism in this country has never been so fragile. In many European countr…

Religion for Atheists for The Rest of Us

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…vishly praises the usefulness of religious traditions for dealing with the problems of what he calls “the modern soul.” Those problems basically amount to egotism: “When God is dead, human beings—much to their detriment—are at risk of taking psychological center stage… Religion is above all a symbol of what exceeds us and an education in the advantages of recognizing our paltriness.” And he doesn’t just look to moral wisdom in religious texts; he…

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…biosis between the two perspectives. We are all working on a set of common problems. We all know how deeply some of these ideas are enshrined in people’s hearts and minds. If we just see studying religion as an arcane exercise alone then it is in a sense belittling the subject. People truly want to know, and such study is very helpful for those who truly want to know. And the knowledge gives them context. For example, Christians really want to kno…

Václav Havel: Democracy as Spiritual Discipline

By Peter Montgomery

…, unfortunately, we often find that a straightforward analysis of specific problems and a calm, unbiased consideration of them are being pushed out of public debate by something that might be called ‘market madness.’ […] It is a great mistake to think that the marketplace and morality are mutually exclusive. Precisely the opposite is true: the marketplace can work only if it has its own morality — a morality generally enshrined in laws, regulation…

Why Don’t Muslims Condemn Terrorism?

By Hussein Rashid

…the more we know about each other the more likely we are find solutions to problems, areas to agree to disagree, and a way to live our own lives that does not intrude on anyone else’s way. Osama bin Laden does not control the Muslim world. There cannot be a level of centralized control over 1.6 billion people. Nor can all non-Muslims, over 6.5 billion people speak with one voice. Once we use a little commonsense it becomes easier to move away from…

Disgruntled Former Head of Bush Faith-Based Office Praises Obama’s

By Sarah Posner

…that while “hard data are hard to find,” it nonetheless “appears that the number of faith-based grantees has actually increased since 2008, and some religious nonprofits, notably the largest Catholic ones, have received record federal funding over the last several years.” (emphasis added) The transparency issue is hardly a minor one. Why are hard data hard to find? If there indeed has been a record amount of taxpayer funding of religious organiza…