Monday's News & Ideas - 5/20/2019

New church building dedicated in Texas town where 26 were killed
The New York Times: The community reached an emotional milestone and dedicated a new worship center that is fortified against potential future danger.

Report traces anti-Muslim Facebook astroturfing campaign to evangelical activist
Religion News Service: A prominent far-right evangelical is behind a coordinated network of Facebook pages that is spreading extreme anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages and conspiracy theories, according to Snopes.
Aeon: Muslims of early America

Trump is not a defender of religious liberty but a threat to it
New York Magazine: Trump is a friend to religion only if your religion happens to be the same as that of his conservative evangelical and traditionalist Catholic allies.

An atheist in the White House? It could happen, thanks to Donald Trump
Salon: Donald Trump doesn't have a single religious bone in his body. This is actually very good news.

Bridging the religious-secular divide
RealClear Politics: The religious and the secular typically share the conviction that between the two communities lies an unbridgeable gulf and the inability to recognize the truth in the other’s claims.

The Spark

How ballerinas defy the corporeal in a quest for the ethereal
Pointe shoes are a strangely enduring anachronism that epitomizes the enduring desire for ballerinas to embody the unnatural, to portray an illusion, Aeon says.

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