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What the devil?
Satan made an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” last week, all duded up in his red tie and cape, to talk about the sex abuse scandal at Penn State. “I may be the Prince of Darkness,” he quipped, “but I’m […]
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Christian leaders talk about marriage and sex
Last week, Rick Warren sent this message to the nearly 500,000 people who follow him on Twitter: “Husbands & wives should satisfy each other’s sexual needs. 1 Cor 7:3.” His Twitter feed lit up with amens and retweets. “Oh gosh,” […]
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A feminine face for the antiabortion movement
When I spoke to one of the nation’s most prominent antiabortion activists this week, she was in the car, rushing to meet her 10-year-old daughter at the school bus. “It’s not a very neat exercise,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, when I asked how […]
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Justice Scalia speaks for himself on death penalty, not the Catholic Church
That Justice Antonin Scalia believes in execution as a moral form of punishment is a well-known fact. That he is an observant, traditional Roman Catholic is, similarly, well-known. That he appears to believe his church supports the death penalty and that he’s […]
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Jesus at Occupy Wall Street: ‘I feel like I’ve been here before’
“What would Jesus think of Occupy Wall Street?” I asked myself this week as I wandered the makeshift, blue-tarp village in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Born with little means into a first-century world, the historical Jesus might feel right at home with the very aspects […]
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An open letter to Mitt Romney
Dear Governor Romney, You haven’t asked, but I’d like to offer you some free, nonpartisan advice about how to talk about your Mormon faith in public. When a Texas megachurch pastor can rob you of a news cycle, as the […]
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Faith vs. reason? That’s really dumb.
A new study, published last month in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by a group of Harvard psychologists, got me thinking for the zillionth time about how much I have come to detest the “faith vs. reason” debate. In this […]
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Loving Judaism but questioning Israel
If politics are personal, then let me say this. I love almost everything about the Judaism I practice: Born into a Jewish family, but raised without any formal religious education, I have in recent years become a member of […]
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New York Mag Cover Story: Parents of a Certain Age
Is there anything wrong with being 53 and pregnant? The first time they had sex, during that initial exploration of unfamiliar flesh, John Ross uttered words to Ann Maloney that would sound to her like prophecy. “You have the body […]
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In GOP race, public prayers seem more political than personal
Among the Republican candidates running for president in 2012, there’s been a whole lot of praying in public. Months before his Christian revival meeting in Houston, Rick Perry prayed, presumably to Jesus, for rain — though when he established the Days of […]