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A ghost in here? IRS targeting Jews too?

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Fear not religion news reporters, you too can jump into one of the hottest news stories on the wires. Buried deep within an article reporting on the Internal Revenue Services’ harassment of conservative advocacy groups lurks  a religious liberty news story. That may not sound too exciting but you could rephrase the story pitch this way for your editor: Has the IRS created a religious test in order to define what it means to be a loyal Jew?


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Pod people: Proselytization, blasphemy and Kermit Gosnell

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Pod people: Proselytization, blasphemy and Kermit Gosnell

On this week’s Crossroads podcast with host Todd Wilken, we talked media coverage of the Pentagon and proselytization, religious freedom and the Benghazi whistleblowers and the trial of Kermit Gosnell. So yeah, we packed a lot in there.


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In post-denominational age, what's in a name?

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Joe Carter, our newest GetReligionista, referenced Southern Baptist name-change discussions in a post earlier this week. It’s a topic that GetReligion has tackled a time or two before — or more.


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Preach, Brother Leitch, Preach!

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Please check out this column from my favorite sportswriter Will Leitch. (And I’m not just saying that because he’s a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan like myself.) His latest piece for Sports on Earth, headlined “Thank God for Homers,” takes on the curious way that some other sportswriters handle Josh Hamilton’s religious utterances.


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Asking the Boy Scout questions that matter the most

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If you know anything about the politics of gay rights, you know that there is absolutely nothing that the Boy Scouts of American can do right now that will not lead to major divisions in their organization. The key force that will cause a future split is, of course, the deep divide among mainstream religious groups on the moral status of homosexual behavior.


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Innumeracy on the Godbeat

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In the summer of 1992, toy-company Mattel was criticized when their new Teen Talk Barbie included in her list of stock phrases, “Math class is tough!” The company offered to replace the doll for disgruntled customers, but they could have saved both time and money by simply rebranding the dolls as Journalist Barbie.


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Let's revisit Benghazi and the First Amendment

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If you didn’t get a chance to watch the Benghazi whistleblowers testify before Congress yesterday, you should. Part of what made it so interesting was how dramatically their testimony contradicted the official line received and published by the media in previous months. It was also just a good lesson in how bureaucracy works and how competing interests can impede the search for truth or justice.


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