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Obama’s AIPAC Speech Hardly a Change to Believe In

…such special interest groups as AIPAC. This speech may have cost him large numbers of these smaller, progressive donors without gaining him much from the small numbers of larger, more conservative donors. Indeed, there may not be a single policy issue where Obama’s liberal base differs from the candidate more than on Israel/Palestine. Not surprisingly, the Green Party and its likely nominee, former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, along wit…

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‘Miracle’ in Manila

…redit for this are the brazen nature of the alleged crime due to the sheer number of top officials implicated and the fact that it comes on the heels of the 2005 “Hello Garcia” scandal in which President Arroyo was accused of rigging the presidential election in her favor, leading to a failed impeachment attempt by the Congress. President Arroyo and her associates in Malacañang, the presidential palace, have also provoked popular anger because of…

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A Question for Hobby Lobby Supporters…

…aception. So is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s th…

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Death Without Religion

…ble assertion to make in such a tendentious book. Perhaps there is a small number of Americans losing their lives at the hands of hasty harvesters; even a very small number would be too high. But I had a hard time summoning any outrage. In the end I learned much more from Kagan—ironically because his aims are in a way more modest. He wants to convince you of his physicalist stance; however, he doesn’t want to tell you how to reconcile with death….

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Grassroots Faith: The Lessons of The Social Gospel

…conomic interests of the time. This engagement led the movement to raise a number of questions about its mission. For example, was the social gospel’s primary objective to cast a wide ideological net to create a broad coalition of secular and religious leaders, or was it to identify itself with specific economic and political policies? Common historical wisdom holds that the social gospel broke apart at the end of World War I, a victim of both a n…

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New Doc Strives for Christian Unity—But What if Unity is the Problem?

…xplore the issues that divide their congregations and communities. After a number of clichés are deployed to describe the deep divisions in US culture—“Our society is getting meaner,” claims one—Colossian resolutely walks participants through various exercises to identify areas of conflict, and helps the pastors work through their differences, respectfully and with love. So far so good. It quickly becomes clear, however, that there’s a major obsta…

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Fasting and Faithy Friends of Convenience

…d the 2008 election; as I’ve argued before, he gained support across the a number of demographic groups, and it’s difficult to make the case that Obama won because he finally shed the Democrats’ (imagined) hostility to religion. If you’re a religious person whose faith compels you to favor government programs to support the less economically blessed among us, pulling the lever for McCain-Palin probably wasn’t in the cards. To add insult to injury…

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The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…

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How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

…dy late last week looking how religious beliefs influence perceptions on a number of different issues. A quick-and-dirty look at the results would tell you that religion doesn’t change much, with a few notable exceptions. For example, this surprising statistic: “60% of those who oppose gay marriage say religion is the most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on…

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Did North Carolinians Vote Against their Own Beliefs?

The most dispiriting number to come out of North Carolina today was the huge margin of victory for a constitutional amendment that, as Candace has noted, will not only forbid same-sex couples from getting married, but will strip couples of any legal protections that might have been offered through domestic partnerships or civil unions. The broad wording of the amendment is more evidence that anti-gay advocates are lying when they say they’re only…

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