by Andre E. JohnsonR3 Editor*Updated As expected, there has been much talk about Mitt Romney’s inelegant but candid remarks about “those people.” Those people he referred to were the 47% of people he claimed did not pay any income tax. As Mother Jones reported, Romney went on to say that, “those people” were “dependent on government; believe “that they are victims” and who also believe that government “has a responsibility to care for them.” He suggested that these people were... Read more
By Rashad GroveR3 ContributorOn one particular occasion I heard Dr. Marvin McMickle give an intriguing illustration that left an indelible mark upon me. He was eloquently speaking on a certain Garfield comic strip that he once read. In the first panel, Garfield is seated at the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day with a feast that was fit for a king. Anything and everything you could imagine was at Garfield’s disposal for consumption. The second panel features Odie the dog chained... Read more
A newly discovered fragment of Coptic writing suggests some contemporaries of Jesus argued about his marital status and some believed he was married, according to a Harvard scholar of early Christianity. Karen L. King, a historian at Harvard Divinity School, presented her finding Tuesday at a meeting of Coptic scholars. In her paper, King notes the papyrus is the “only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the... Read more
Religiously speaking, this presidential election is a fascinating moment in our national life, and for multiple reasons. First, one party nominated a Mormon and a Roman Catholic as president and vice president respectively, the first time in American history that a major party ticket has excluded a Protestant! This is not the first time a Mormon has sought the presidency. The father of the present Republican nominee unsuccessfully pursued that party’s nomination in 1968. Mormon patriarch Joseph Smith ran for... Read more
Even as we watch the violent collision of politics and religion at American embassies around the world, here at home Presidential politics took a decidedly religious turn. Mitt Romney, trailing in several decisive purple states, has resorted to the “God Card.” Capitalizing on the omission (and later reinsertion) of God into the Democratic Party platform, Romney has recently added God into his stump speech, “I will not take God out of my heart, I will not take God out of... Read more
“Experts say Bible has role in American life,” ran the dog-bites-man headline in the Duke Chronicle. “Contrary to popular belief,” the article begins, “the Bible affects people’s everyday lives because of its influence on the political and social realm, experts said.” The experts were on hand for a day-and-a-half conference on “The Bible in the Public Square” sponsored by Duke’s Center for Jewish Studies (with help from the Religion Department and Southern Methodist University). Panels ranged from The Bible and... Read more
If you’ve never changed your mind about something, you may be dead. Spiritually, intellectually, and even politically, if new facts and realities don’t ever prompt you to alter your way of thinking, you might as well be dead. To not learn and change, especially spiritually, is a form of death. But change is hard. It’s also risky. I know about the consequences of changing one’s thinking. I was fired from my position as vice-president for governmental relations at the National... Read more
by Ebony A, UtleyR3 Contributor September 13, 2012, is the sixteenth death anniversary of Tupac Amaru Shakur. While riding in the passenger seat of Suge Knight’s BMW Tupac was shot four times while waiting for a light at the intersection of Koval Lane and Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. He succumbed to his injuries on Friday, September 13, 1996. He was 25 years old. Questions remain. Was it a revenge shooting because of an earlier altercation? Was he shot over... Read more
My attention was riveted by a story in The Jerusalem Report of September 10, 2012, because it dealt with a topic that has fascinated me since my childhood (for a reason I will briefly mention momentarily). The story reports on a move to revive the Aramaic language in a Christian Arab village in Israel. Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, has a very long history, during which it was for a while the official language of the Persian... Read more
Rhetoric Race and Religion
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