I like to call Ramadan a personal spiritual boot camp. One not only fasts but also prays more, is more careful of one’s interactions with others, tries to exhibit more patience and love. The hunger and thirst — even the overall sense of exhaustion one feels by the end of each day — is a fuel that pushes a Muslim to do better, to fight the internal impulses towards negativity and sin, and to become a better person. Is that possible without fasting? Maybe. But with fasting it is definitely probable. By the end of the 30 days of Ramadan, one feels invigorated, nearer to God, and somehow optimistic.
In a three-page letter, U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela blasted Donald Trump as a “racist” and told him “you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass,” reports Chron.
Vela, a Democrat from the border town of Brownsville, Texas, opened the letter diplomatically, admitting that he agrees with Trump that the government has failed veterans, that Mexican drug cartel violence requires a more serious response, and that felons who are undocumented ought to be deported.
Atheists and other freethinkers gathered on the National Mall for their second “Reason Rally” in fewer numbers than organizers had hoped but with evidence of growing political acceptance.
Wearing T-shirts and carrying signs rejecting religion and supporting science, thousands cheered speeches from politicians, scientists, and secular leaders about church-state separation and freedom from religion.
As part of a segment on the debt collection industry, John Oliver, host of LastWeek Tonight, bought up $15 million worth of individuals’ medical debt and forgave it all.
“It is pretty clear by now debt buying is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight,” Oliver said. “Because as it stands any idiot can get into it, and I can prove that to you, because I’m an idiot, and we started a debt buying company, and it was disturbingly easy.”
I’ve never been more aware of my brokenness than in motherhood. Yes, I’m sinful and bent toward destruction (not unlike my toddler, it’s worth noting). But my brokenness also plays out in a general reality that I’m not quite in working order.
Like a tricycle with a wobbly wheel, I just can’t get the job done gracefully. I leave laundry in the washing machine for too long, I meal-plan for only three days out of the week, I forget to brush hair and wipe faces for picture day. It’s not graceful, but it is grace-full.
Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore has not been shy about mixing it up with Donald Trump, and now Moore is at it again, telling an interviewer that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is a “lost person” who needs to find Jesus.
“My primary prayer for Donald Trump is that he would first of all repent of sin and come to faith in Jesus Christ,” Moore told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network in a video posted June 3.
A mimetic rivalry happens when rivals who want the same thing want it more and more precisely because of the other’s desire. Thiel and Gawker, for example, would vehemently deny that they are anything like one another, and yet they want the same thing.
"Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere."
The Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have been on a long road to reconciliation in the centuries since Henry VIII broke with the pope.
But it’s unlikely that the latest faith-sharing move by a drunken Church of England vicar will do much to advance the cause of ecumenism.
President Obama plans on June 3 to commute the sentences of 42 federal prisoners, 20 of whom have life sentences, according to The Huffington Post.
Obama has used his commutation power much more often than past presidents — his 348 commutations so far surpass the total issued by the past seven combined.