It took me a few days to process Huffington Post’s article on federal student loan forgiveness, and the controversy over clergy not being considered “public service” workers – which means they can’t earn debt forgiveness after 10 years.
It took me a few days to process Huffington Post’s article on federal student loan forgiveness, and the controversy over clergy not being considered “public service” workers – which means they can’t earn debt forgiveness after 10 years.
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Gotta love Fox News’ hard-hitting journalism: last week, the news giant released an article with the headline “Pagan Mom challenges Bible giveaway at North Carolina school,” and I really only clicked on it to see if the “Pagan Mom” was actually Pagan and not just a non-Christian. (Hey, this is Fox News we’re talking about…) But it turns out the woman in question practices Witchcraft, and was filing a complaint against her local school district because her 12-year-old had come home with a Bible one day. While it turned out the school hadn’t exactly given him the Bible – a bunch of them had been dropped off by a Christian nonprofit, and the school just told the students they were there for whoever wanted them – Pagan Mom1 tried to give the school some spellbooks for students to peruse,...
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Ever heard of Naguib Sawiris? I hadn’t, until hearing that he was having charges brought against him in Egypt for an “insulting” tweet. Sawiris is the chairman of Egypt’s largest cell phone provider, Mobinil, and is known for having a hand in politics. According to his Twitter bio, he’s a founding member of Egypt’s Al Masreyeen Al Ahrrar party, which emphasizes civil rights and making a society free of religious persecution. Last June, Sawiris allegedly tweeted a cartoon of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing traditional Islamic attire – with Minnie wearing a niqab and Mickey sporting a beard, according to the BBC News article. He later apologized, but the damage was done: conservative groups called for a boycott of his company, and now charges are being brought against him in court.
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Thank God for Jon Stewart, otherwise I probably never would’ve seen the shenanigans that went down at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) GOP candidate forum on December 7th.1 The all-day event cost $500 per person to get into, and was mainly a target for critique by individuals condemning Republicans’ relatively intolerant views toward Palestine. I respect the Republican candidates’ right to talk about how much they love Israel – and who wouldn’t side with Israel in a room full of Jewish voters? Though I disagree with the candidates’ Palestine-bashing, that’s not even the part I take the most issue with. Well, directly take issue with, anyway.
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When I was younger, I sympathized with fellow Christians who argued for “putting the Christ back into Christmas” and boycotting stores that omitted references to Christmas. It made sense to me then that since Christmas was the main reason for corporate profits that time of year, those businesses shouldn’t go out of their way to censor the “reason for the season.” But then I grew up.
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CNN’s Belief Blog rarely draws ire from me, but I couldn’t help but feel annoyed when the phrase “Family Research Council1 president Tony Perkins” popped up in an Op-Ed description on the front page. I made the mistake of clicking it and was shocked when, halfway through the article, Perkins describes Jesus’ “parable of the ten minas” as being in favor of free market capitalism. The parable, which involves two nobleman’s servants wisely investing their money, one mina2 each, and getting a large return on it, is used as evidence to suggest that Christians should be satisfied with the current free market system. Since the nobleman in the parable praised the servants for using their one mina to gain more wealth, Jesus must be demanding that we build our own wealth using the “same opportunity” granted to all Americans,...
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At a time when economic and social justice movements seem to be growing louder than ever, it’s high time to reexamine religion’s role in dissent. Ask many activists at a left-wing rally about their religion, and, in my experience, you’ll get mostly ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheist’, with the odd religious individuals thrown in. This creates an interesting situation for myself, a right-wing Christian turned progressive Christian, who still uses swear words but avoids using God’s name in an improper context, and struggles to find a church that adheres to my progressive worldviews. I get mixed reactions when I tell other activists I identify as Christian; sometimes they’re good at hiding their surprise or even seem almost happy, and at other times their sudden misgivings are obvious. I don’t blame them. After all, we live in times in which most young...
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