Religion Dispatches
The mood in Cuernavaca was subdued this week after four decapitated bodies were discovered, hung from their feet from an overpass in yet another set of drug-related assassinations. Turf-battles between rival drug cartels have plagued the once-tranquil “city of eternal spring” since…
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While Americans celebrate Labor Day with picnics, BBQs, and weekend getaways, Germany-based FIAA GmbH is releasing the beta version of The Bible Online: Heroes, the first installment of a projected series of MMORTS (massively multiplayer…
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For the past four years, Pastor Bill Dunfee of the New Beginnings Ministries Church has led his congregation in picketing The Foxhole, a tiny gentleman’s club in Warsaw, Ohio. Church members usually arrive at the Foxhole on weekends at 11:30pm, bearing signs, bullhorns, and cameras. While…
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If Eid ul-Fitr falls on the anniversary of 9/11, it will be an especially difficult task for a Muslim in New York. How do I, as an American and a Muslim, deal with what people claiming my religion did to us—New Yorkers, Americans, human beings?
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Although I have become more cynical about the power of simply listening to music in the decade since I found the CD, I still had high hopes for the festival. As a festival for music, it was beautiful, but as a venue for intercultural understanding, I believe it missed the mark more than it hit it.
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When I was told that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer and that this has sparked a discussion about whether people ought to pray for him, my first reaction was a stupefying bewilderment. I can’t say that I’ve entirely recovered.
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As scholars have been reminding us for a very long time by now, private reading and the linear thinking valued by many as essential for deep, contemplative thought, did not feature much in the lives of the people who pretty much brought us the contemplative tradition.
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The fact that I live in a neighborhood and a nation where each person’s right to celebrate Independence Day as noisily as possible is held sacred gives special piquancy to reflecting on a book about noise on such a day—right under the rocket’s red glare, as it were.
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A new documentary delves into the Mormon involvement in the passage of California’s Proposition 8, but it misses a chance to see the big picture. It wasn’t just run-of-the-mill theological homophobia that galvanized the LDS church, but a fear that the spectre of Mormon polygamy would arise if LGBT people were allowed to marry. And what do some polygamists think? Gay marriage or plural marriage: it’s a question of civil rights.
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