Day: September 3, 2008

IRS surfing church websites

In one recent I.R.S. memo, the question is addressed with almost Talmudic intensity, urging enforcement agents to explore the issue of “electronic proximity — including the number of ‘clicks’ that separate the objectionable material from the 501(c)(3) organization’s Web site.”

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God-O-Meter Q&A with Sarah Palin’s Biographer

Prior to becoming governor in 2006, her pastor was David Pepper of the Church on the Rock in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla — a church that “was kind of a foundation for her.” Pepper, it should be noted, is outspoken on slavery, racism, and the massacres of Native Americans, all of which he terms “sins” that still cast a long shadow on minority communities.

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NY Court backs governor regarding gay marriage

“When partners manifest the commitment to their relationship and family, by solemnizing that commitment elsewhere, through one of life’s most significant events, and come to New York, whether returning home or setting down roots, to carry on that commitment, nothing is more antithetical to family stability than requiring them to abandon that solemnized commitment.”

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Technology enters the Sabbath-mode

These modes either turn off certain lights, fans and alarms, or use a Jewish legal concept known as “gramma,” or indirect action, to operate the appliance on holy days. In refrigerators, for example, a built-in delay prevents the compressor from turning on immediately after the door is opened.

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Liberal Christianity’s intellectual roots

Much of the more responsible and, indeed, progressive theology these days derives from the modernist theologians: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann and Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). Every single one of these created a special space for the heart of Christianity, its special message that is said to be different from all other knowledge disciplines.

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The real way into life

The expression “bearing one’s cross” has become a feeble, pious commonplace, a trite metaphor for resigning oneself to some unavoidable burden or misfortune. . . . The image of taking up the cross was not some esoteric symbol for Jesus, but a horrible reality of daily life in an enemy-occupied country. No one could travel about Palestine for every long without coming across pitiful processions of condemned criminals, naked, bloody, dragging the crossbars to the places of execution. . . .

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