Tag Archives: Religion

Recognizing a Freak: An Atheist Reads Flannery O’Connor

By Raul Quinque

Pho­to Cred­it: flan­nery o’con­nor and pea­cock pub­lished by will (50 watts)

The read­er and the writer. Two sides of the same coin. Par­don, the same page. Rela­tion­ship sta­tus: It’s com­pli­cat­ed since only one gets to state what’s on their mind. Thus, it’s only fair to talk back via text. Flan­nery O’Connor (1925–1964) may be long gone from this world, but her lit­er­a­ture endures as an eter­nal mes­sage. And so does the ques­tion how an athe­ist-by-con­vic­tion con­nects to Catholic O’Connor’s South­ern Goth­ic reli­gious themes.

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Happy Hanukkah 2022!

By Sabrina Völz

If you live in the Unit­ed States or in many oth­er places in the world, it’s impos­si­ble not to know any­thing about Christ­mas. How­ev­er, the same can­not nec­es­sar­i­ly be said about the Jew­ish hol­i­day of Hanukkah, which begins tonight, on Decem­ber 18, and runs until Mon­day, Decem­ber 26. In hon­or of the Feast of Ded­i­ca­tion, some­times referred to as the Fes­ti­val of Lights, I’d like to invite you to watch this short, infor­ma­tive video:

Please acti­vate javascript to watch the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDMoklVYsvU

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Accidental New Horizons at the North American University in the Heart of Europe

By Hannah Quinque

Pho­to Cred­it: Han­nah Quinque, Win­ter on the beach

Last fall, I had the priv­i­lege of spend­ing a semes­ter abroad. What bet­ter place to go for a North Amer­i­can Stud­ies Pro­file grad­u­ate than across the pond?

Even if said pond hap­pens to be the Baltic Sea rather than the Atlantic Ocean, my jour­ney did take me to the “North Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in the Heart of Europe”, i.e., the Repub­lic of Lithua­nia. And if you’re ask­ing your­self: “What is it doing there?” or per­haps even: “What were you doing there?” let me intro­duce you to this one-of-a-kind place called LCC Inter­na­tion­al University.

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Divided Country, Divided Family

By Levin Schüren

“Divi­sion” by Nick Youngson

Let’s just stop for a minute and reflect on a polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, or moral issue you’re wrong about. It ain’t that easy, right? But why not? The chance that you’re right on every top­ic you think and argue about is basi­cal­ly zero. Of course, if you knew you were wrong about some­thing you wouldn’t hold that belief or even preach it. When­ev­er some­body utters an opin­ion we don’t agree with, our minds go: How dare you believe that? Of course, you can shield your­self from such thoughts by avoid­ing opin­ions that dif­fer from yours. How­ev­er, that’s a bad idea. It’s impor­tant to talk to peo­ple, so let me give you some prac­ti­cal advice on how to do it. Espe­cial­ly since the hol­i­days are upon us, you’ll like­ly meet fam­i­ly mem­bers you haven’t seen in a while. So here comes an instruc­tion man­u­al on how to deal with that crazy aunt of yours who wor­ships con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.  

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Santa vs. God – The Final Round

By Agata Mazurek

Pho­to Cred­it: Aga­ta Mazurek

Have you ever won­dered, between dec­o­rat­ing your Christ­mas tree and look­ing for presents, what for God’s sake you’re doing? The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, you’re sup­posed to be prepar­ing for Jesus’s birth­day, but do you actu­al­ly do it? Maybe you’re not even a Chris­t­ian. 

I don’t know why, but I have this strong feel­ing that most Chris­tians have for­got­ten ‘the rea­son for the sea­son’. Of course, we still cel­e­brate the birth of Christ, maybe even loud­er than before. Def­i­nite­ly ear­li­er than before. Shop own­ers so much love to cel­e­brate Jesus’s birth­day that they start their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and pro­mote Christ­mas prod­ucts at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber already. I think God would be proud. There are, how­ev­er, more incon­sis­ten­cies.  

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Politics and Religion in a Secular State

By Bobbie Kirkhart

It is iron­ic that, as the world’s first sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy hav­ing scorned all state reli­gion, we soon became and have remained, social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, pre­oc­cu­pied with god. Cam­paign speech­es end with “God bless you.” The song, “God Bless Amer­i­ca,” which Irv­ing Berlin wrote as a par­o­dy sung by a com­i­cal­ly chau­vin­is­tic char­ac­ter, is now per­formed as a patri­ot­ic hymn.

“God Bless Amer­i­ca” by Joelk75 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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