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God’s Obituary: A Humanist Response to Mass Murder

…all the answers. Rather, in light of human tragedy, humanists might offer better questions during these challenging times, as well as a space for wrestling with these questions free of cosmic justifications—and a God clearly missing in action.  I write this not to deny comfort for those who have been directly and indirectly touched by this unspeakable act of violence. Mine is an effort to acknowledge and respect grief without so quickly pushing t…

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Mumbai, Five Months After: Searching for a Coherent Stance on Religious Violence

…c power of the nation-state, and is comfortable with the way privilege and freedoms are dispensed within the national society. This perspective came naturally and instinctively to both the Indian middle classes and the political establishment. Of course, it should be remembered, the Right encompasses a sweeping range of attitudes: from conservative middle-class supporters of the free market content to work hard on building their social capital and…

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Why So Many American Christians Don’t Understand Protest

…g to bow to them, instead creating a new holy space where the oppressed go free. What better moment to consider our place as faithful Christians than during this season of Advent? In a time when American Christianity has perhaps sold its soul for 30 pieces of silver, taking refuge in the security of a violent empire, we would do well to remember that our good news first came as an act of divine protest in the body of a poor, brown baby born in a b…

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As Funny as the Times Will Allow: Obama on Late Night TV

…agedy, but it exists in uneasy relation to morality. Comic artists must be free to offend, free to be mean. This doesn’t mean that there should be no restriction on what the comedian can say, by the way; not at all. Comedians, like all artists, need constraints in order to show off their creative virtuosity. It is the audiences that need to restrain themselves; they need to permit themselves a laugh. Or not. The question, then, is not whether it w…

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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

…inciple. As I wrote at the time, Romney had a conundrum: needing to defend free exercise of religion (an in particular, his religion), but realizing that the Republican base demands the “Judeo-Christian” answer. Given that many conservative evangelicals don’t even think Romney’s religion is part of Christianity, when he gave the “Judeo-Christian” answer last night I cringed—because he didn’t balance it with a free exercise answer. In other words,…

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The Big Lie Misrepresentation in Louisiana “Seal of Confessional” Case

The systematic abuse of the free exercise clause strikes again. In this latest episode, according to bloggers at Hot Air and the American Conservative, “[t]he Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional,” and “Fr. Bayhi will have to go to jail to protect the seal of the confessional.” These pundits can, to some extent, be forgiven for these misleading statements since the Catholic C…

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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

…experiments—imagining how the United States could disintegrate into a war between the righteous and unrighteous—is not necessarily a problem. Many kinds of legitimate dissent and hopes for the future can be channeled through prophetic images. Some of these are harmless or even constructive. Still, the more that these thoughts point toward the sorts of actions that Robertson seems to consider appropriate, the more disturbing they are; bordering on…

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Junior Falwell Unmasked Conservatism; Let’s Thank Him For It

…slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants. Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see….

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This Year in Satanism

…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…

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Why Won’t Conservatives Call Gay-Bashing a Hate Crime?

…what some opponents of the Mathew Shepard Act have claimed, people remain free to harbor and even promulgate heterosexist and homophobic beliefs. But to admit that gay-bashing is a hate crime is to admit that it is fueled by broader cultural forces and teachings. It is to take a step toward admitting that what is being taught by some religious communities—perhaps even one’s own—may play a role in promoting real evil. It is to take a step toward a…

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