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What Every Christian Should Know About Torture
Torture Isn’t Actually Partisan It takes a certain level of what Pope Francis calls “spiritual Alzheimers” for Christians to think torture is acceptable. In any circumstance. I’m willing to give us some level of forgiveness for our confusion in the closing months of 2001, when the country, and particularly the government, was searching for ways to respond…
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Why TV Needs Father Gabriel
Warning: mild spoilers of The Walking Dead follow. The Walking Dead. I haven’t read the comics, though I should have by now. I’m a geek, I used to be a comic geek at that, and I love the show, so this is totally in my wheelhouse. Maybe I love the suspense of watching the show as it comes on: of waiting until…
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Hobby Lobby decision restricts religious liberty
Today’s decision does not expand religious liberty, but restricts it. In a Darwinian example of the rights of the powerful expanded on the backs of the weak, the Hobby Lobby decision is a boon, not to Christians, but to corporations and a particular kind of pro-corporate Christian. The Decision Despite the media coverage of the…
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Teaching Mixed Messages: love, violence, and more Walking Dead
The Michigan Militia It was the late 90’s and several militia groups, most famously the “Michigan Militia” had bloomed in the thumb-area of Michigan, just down the road from my college. The populist rage that would a decade later birth the Birthers and the Tea Party was a post-Waco response to a perceived lack of…
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Who Survives: the morbid morality of The Walking Dead
[Warning: While I am not recapping the most recent episode, there are some spoilers from “The Grove” and from earlier episodes in Season 4. I’ll leave the recaps for EW and The Daily Beast. The subject however, remains difficult and not suitable for all readers.] Last night’s episode of The Walking Dead, “The Grove” is…
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Proof the U.S. is not a Christian Nation
Of course, this image demonstrates that people don’t really want to cut anything from the federal budget. Except one thing. You know, the one most Christian thing on this list. That, they want to get rid of.
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When Torture Became Conventional
Last fall, The Walking Dead had its inevitable torture episode. It wasn’t surprising from a show that is so gleefully violent and revels in the dark recesses of the human psyche. As the story arc progressed, it became only a matter of time before one human would torture another. There was always something truly inevitable…
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Christianity and the Falling Man
From Surreal to Real Hearing that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center wasn’t the most arresting thing I heard eleven years ago. At work, the rampant speculating, the absurd discontinuity of airplanes and buildings in far away places made the tragedy distant somehow. News spread in the waning minutes…