religion
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Ken Chitwood: A Voice for Religious Literacy
As I dug deeper into his website I discovered a 28-minute video clip of a talk he gave several years ago at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Weldon Spring, MO. The talk was on Christian-Muslim relations. He was speaking passionately about increasing understanding between these two religious traditions. Turns out this is what he does. He says his calling is to increase the level of religious literacy in the world. Greater understanding paves the way to greater tolerance. He goes on to say that for him it’s more than work—it’s a divine inspiration.
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It’s Easy to Knock Religion
I recently came across this piece and found it to be a beautiful, uplifting and timely response by Rabbi Marc Gellman to a bigoted question about religion.
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A Kindred “Soul”—New Animated Film Finds Spiritual Common Ground
The big question is: how did the filmmakers navigate the minefield of religious dogma when it comes to the representation of what a soul is, and what happens before and after life in the “meat suit,” as one of the characters puts it?
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A Place for Women in Religion—Hint: It’s Not the Kitchen
Let me just start by saying I’m about as girlie of a girl as anyone I’ve ever known. A dress is my attire of choice, even during many forms of exercise, and I absolutely love makeup.
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A Scientologist Asks, Is Religion Necessary for a Society to Thrive?
Just as scientists don’t rely on the blessings of priests to practice their disciplines, priests do not need the approval of science for their continued right to exist and to provide for the spiritual needs of their parishioners.
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Aretha’s Soul
And at the end of the concert, she smiled. Women had shivered, men had wept. Reverend James Cleveland, who had brought her to that Church to sing with that choir—his choir—was so moved that he had to stop. He was so embraced, he had to sit down. He sobbed into a napkin.
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Beliefs About Believing
You won’t find anyone whose pupils contract that doesn’t believe something. From the time we are born, we “believe” everything we sense, and we compute with it.
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Can Faith Leaders Help Our Society Heal? I Think So.
Each one of them has a different set of religious beliefs but they are all working together toward a common goal of healing a society that seems to be splitting apart. They all admire each other. They all respect each other. And they are all in communication.
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Celluloid, Cigarettes and Religion
It was the early 90s and we were sitting in a dingy film editing room in Encino, California. I looked over at Steve, who’d just asked me the question. He was a fellow film editor; we’d both met earlier that day when our boss, Fima, had pointed to stacks of film reels and told us in his thick Russian-Yiddish accent, “We have three film to cut, I don’t care who cuts which one.”
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Christianity Is Not Responsible for the Acts of One Insane Man
It’s human nature to want to understand things. Our relentless curiosity is what drives us forward as individuals and as a culture. Most people take it for granted that the present is a more enlightened age than any previous one, the idea being that we are constantly evolving and improving.
