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Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…etter-balanced understanding of the impact of religion on American society today.” But equating “the production of economic value” with “positive impact on society” seems disingenuous. And that apparent desire to overcorrect may have led to the study’s biggest problem. Other than a brief mention in their introduction and conclusion, the study doesn’t consider ways in which religion might detract from economic production. Devoting a half dozen sent…

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Mexican Bishops Exorcism Against Equality; African Bishops Oppose ‘Enemy of Human Race’; Israeli Islamic Leader Anti-Gay Op-Ed

By Peter Montgomery

…ples can get married here.” Rodriguez reports that part of the campaign is promotion of “The Outing, the only matchmaking festival in the world for same-sex couples, which is part of the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival that starts at the end of August and runs into October.” Every year since the late 19th century, the small spa town in the Irish community of County Clare, famous for its mineral-water springs, cozy pubs, classically colorful shop…

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Overnight Sensation ‘The Rich Men North of Richmond’ isn’t Just a Window into a Forgotten America — It’s an Invitation into a Worldview

By Bradley Onishi

…ot to pay for your bags of fudge rounds It’s hard not to read “welfare” as code. Welfare has long been used in conservative circles as a dog whistle for Black people, immigrants, and others who are supposedly too lazy to work and thus draining the life from our society. The idea of the “welfare queen,” a single Black urban mother, was introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1976: “At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced the welfare queen into…

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I Met God, She’s Black: An Exhibit Makes the Black Female Body a Temple

By Anita Little

…to resistance within the family structure that allowed for them to be here today. That’s a really important component of this project. People are desiring to heal, but they’re also desiring to affirm the power of resistance to social forces. It seems a lot of black women who came to this exhibit saw it as a sacred space and described it as similar to going to church. How does this space stand as an alternative to spaces like the black church where…

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Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…than thinking about the self as being a language—as being like a computer code that speaks—we think about the self as a cluster of forces. [These forces] make us what we are, and our decisions come from that rather than from this linguistic layer, which is actually constituted by that more fundamental cluster of forces. That’s what I see affect theory doing: upsetting this idea that human beings start with language and that we do what we do becau…

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Benny Hinn Can’t Heal His Marriage

By Anthea Butler

…Christians is not reason enough for a divorce and, more often than not, is code for “serious sin.” Pentecostals have a history of being strict about reasons to divorce, adultery being scripturally the only reason to do so. For those who divorce and who have a denominational affiliation through ministerial license, a divorce can mean, at best, additional scrutiny and at worst, stripping of ministerial credentials. Of course, that never has stopped…

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Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend

By Kathryn Joyce

…ly career-ending situation in the Marines, where failure to obtain regular promotions results in being discharged. Moreover, as a woman in the military, accustomed to proving herself to her male peers over her six-year career, Amy was wary of appearing a “weak female.” “If you get sent home for something like that, everyone will know about it,” says Amy. “That’s a really bad stigma in the military. I thought, that’s not me, I’ve worked harder and…

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Glenn Beck Hijacks It’s a Wonderful Life

By Lauri Lebo

…nd active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks Mr. Potter is the hero…

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Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

By Xarissa Holdaway

…d vengeance. At least in theory, those principles shape our justice system today. In practice, we aren’t always so guided by calm reason and conscience. For example, while Tsarnaev’s lawyers plan his appeal against the death penalty, he is being held at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the country, which the New York Times called “America’s Toughest Federal Prison.” Most in…

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What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ned. Jumping the gun, or perhaps the shark, writers from the LA Times, USA Today, NY Times, and many other major outlets have already weighed in, well before the finale sinks in. What then am I offering in the midst of the hullabaloo? Why write before it is over? Why write at all? Because the ultimate response to the show’s questions have already been answered. The ending of the finale is (spoiler alert) not important. There are no answers that ca…

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