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Paul for the People: John Dominic Crossan Imagines a “Letter to the Americans” In His New Video Series

…hosting a bunch of them for dinner at the White House. If Paul were active today, what message do you think he would want to send to this group? In the prologue to the new video series I imagine Paul writing a letter called To the Americans and written in the same blunt style he used to address so many communities across the eastern Roman Empire. It’s worth speculating about what he might say. He might, for example, ask us about our Pledge of Alle…

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Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

…less the government is actively requiring citizens to do something, courts today tend to be sympathetic toward public expressions of religion. “If he sues, he won’t have standing,” said Ledewitz. “Not on the constitutional claim.” In its statement, NASA explained that it had received the letter from the FFRF and was “thoroughly reviewing the grant awarded to CTI. Until that review is complete, NASA will refrain from responding to FFRF’s claims.” A…

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Obama and the Louie Giglio Controversy

…gelical,” and in the 1990s, this was certainly not unusual, and isn’t even today. I’m not excusing it, I’m just saying this seems sort of inevitable if Obama is going to pick a conservative evangelical. The question is why he does. Whether this will cause the same uproar that Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his first inauguration remains to be seen, but already one can sense some the outcry brewing. But unlike with Wa…

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Lurid Picture of Nigeria’s Muslims in Newsweek

…of the country (the so-called Middle Belt), attempts to partition Nigeria today would leave the Muslim majority in the country’s northern third high and dry in economic terms. It would also plunge the religiously-mixed Middle Belt into endless chaos, as much based on the tensions between farmers and herders as on religious differences. Level heads in all parts of Nigeria, Christian and Muslim, realize the essential interdependence of all the coun…

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Faith-Based Initiatives in the Obama Administration?

…ggie Gallagher—who also worked with the National Fatherhood Initiative—“to promote marriage”; and “gave money to writer Mike McManus to support marriage promotion, while also giving money to McManus’ organization, Marriage Savers (‘a ministry that equips … local congregations to prepare for lifelong marriages …’).” Horn was, coincidentally, a founding board member of Marriage Savers. In addition to the NFI grants, in 2006 the organization received…

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Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

…new groups of people. You also make it more available to commodification. Today, a studio like MNDFL can insist that it’s a non-religious space, even as it draws on religious traditions. “The secularization is explicitly designed to make [mindfulness] more marketable,” said Jeff Wilson, a Buddhism scholar at Renison University College in Canada and the author of Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Cultur…

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Welcome to the (New) Gilded Age: Supreme Court Delivers the Goods to Corporations

…d and theologically-sanctioned movement that is prepared to do battle with today’s equivalent of the railroad barons? If you can’t answer the question in less than two seconds you already have your answer. Yes, we have noble community-labor-religion coalitions scattered across the country that are winning mostly limited victories over abusive employers. And at the national level we have some feisty networks like Interfaith Worker Justice, PICO, an…

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How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

…arge again after running against the tariff and the Silver Act, they, like today’s GOP, were in the hook to make good on their promises of returning America to better, simpler days without government interference. Then, the worst depression of the nineteenth century, the Panic of 1893, hit. The Democrats put all their efforts into repealing the Silver Act, which it blamed for the country’s financial difficulties. But when that didn’t end the panic…

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Jesus Comes Out for Christmas

…sten, and especially to those who would not. Like the gays and lesbians of today, Jesus made enemies when he came out. Jesus angered his family, he angered his friends, and most of all he angered those in power when he came out against the greed, the neglect of the poor, the inequality, and the injustice all around him. Like many of the gays and lesbians of today, that coming out cost him his life. Coming out is not for wimps—it really does take a…

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First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

…who profited from putting up pilgrims and selling food and wares. Then as today, approval by the Vatican involved both strict alignment with doctrine and a spotless personal record for anyone involved. Trends in official sainthood have changed over time based on who best represents the political and theological interests of the Vatican. Still, the Catholic Church tends not to uphold stringent regulations on folk devotion. Most apparitions, miracl…

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