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The Texas Ten Commandments Bill S.B. 10:

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00010I.pdf

Texas Faith Leaders’ Open Letter Against Bill S.B. 10:

https://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Texas-faith-leaders-10C-Letter.pdf

Read: The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine Faris King.

https://a.co/d/dWcfyTN

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Quotes to consider:

“The failure to treat religion ‘as religion’–that is, the refusal to ratify its claim of transcendent nature and sacrosanct status–may be regarded as heresy and sacrilege by those who construct themselves as religious, but it is the starting point for those who construct themselves as historians.”

—Bruce Lincoln (born 1948)

“The basic error of fundamentalism is that it overlooks the contribution of the receptive side in the revelatory situation and consequently identifies one individual and conditioned form of receiving the divine with the divine itself. But there are other forms.

“Even in the Bible we find differences between the priestly and prophetic writings, between early and late traditions in the Four Gospels. We find them, too, in the classics of church history and in the denominational interpretations of the Bible today. Revelation cannot be separated from them.

“…But there is no pure revelation. Wherever the divine is manifest, it is manifest in ‘flesh,’ that is, in a concrete, physical, and historical reality, as in the religious receptivity of the biblical writers.”

—Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

“Four themes are essential to the prophetic-liberating tradition of Biblical faith: (1) God's defense and vindication of the oppressed; (2) the critique of the dominant systems of power and their powerholders; (3) the vision of a new age to come in which the present system of injustice is overcome and God's intended reign of peace and justice is installed in history; and (4) finally, the critique of ideology, or of religion, since ideology in this context is primarily religious.

“Prophetic faith denounces religious ideologies and systems that function to justify and sanctify the dominant, unjust social order. These traditions are central to the Prophets and to the mission of Jesus. Hence the critical-liberating tradition is the axis around which the prophetic-messianic line of Biblical faith revolves as a foundation for Christianity.”

—Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936-2022)

Read: The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine Faris King.

https://a.co/d/dWcfyTN

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DISCLAIMER:

We will not be saying anything positive about religion in this episode. If you'd like to hear us say something positive about religion, you will have to wait another week.

Read: The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine Faris King.

https://a.co/d/dWcfyTN

Check out BGMania: A Videogame Music Podcast

https://bgmania.podbean.com/

Follow us on:listeningreligiously.substack.com

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Theme Song: Bedtime After A Coffee

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“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

“The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Read: The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine Faris King.

https://a.co/d/dWcfyTN

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Read: The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine Faris King.

https://a.co/d/dWcfyTN

Check out BGMania: A Videogame Music Podcast

https://bgmania.podbean.com/

Follow us on:listeningreligiously.substack.com

Or shoot us an email at:

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Follow us on:listeningreligiously.substack.comOr shoot us an email at:[email protected]Theme Song: Bedtime After A CoffeeComposer: Barradeen (Argentina)Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfTggY6U7d6XVre774B1_qgLicense: Free To Use YouTube Music powered by BreakingCopyright:

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Quote from Jeffrey J. Kripal:

“[T]he future hinges largely on how future generations, including (and especially) your generation, critically compare across cultural, religious, and social divisions.”

The “Two Gods” poem of Kabir Das (15th CE)

Translated by Linda Hess and Shukdeo Singh:

Brother, where did your two gods come from?

Tell me, who made you mad?

Ram, Allah, Keshav, Karim, Hari, Hazrat—

so many names.

So many ornaments, all one gold,

it has no double nature.

For conversation we make two—

this namaz, that puja, this Mahadev, that Muhammed,

this Brahma, that Adam, this a Hindu, that a Turk,

but all belong to earth.

Vedas, Korans, all those books, those Mullas and those Brahmins—

so many names, so many names,

but the pots are all one clay.

Kabir says, nobody can find Ram,

both sides are lost in schisms.

One slaughters goats, one slaughters cows,

they squander their birth in isms.

Recommended text:

Kripal, Jeffrey J. Comparing Religions: The Study of Us that Changes Us. Wiley-Blackwell, 2024.

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Or shoot us an email at:[email protected]Theme Song: Bedtime After A CoffeeComposer: Barradeen (Argentina)Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfTggY6U7d6XVre774B1_qg

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[Update: So I totally said “resurrection” instead of “insurrection.” Whoops.]

The “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them” Verse (Qur’an 2:190-191)

“Fight in God’s cause against those who fight you, but do not overstep the limits. God does not love those who overstep the limits. Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out, for persecution [fitna; ‘insurrection’] is more serious than killing. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there. If they do fight you, kill them—this is what such disbelievers deserve—but if they stop, then God is most forgiving and merciful.”

The “No Compulsion in Religion” Verse (Qur’an 2:256):

“There is no compulsion in religion: true guidance has become distinct from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped the firmest hand-hold, one that will never break…As for the disbelievers, their allies are false gods who take them from the light into the depths of darkness, they are the inhabitants of the Fire, and there they will remain.”

Recommended texts:

Haleem, M. A. S. Abdel. The Qur’an. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Haleem, M. A. S. Abdel. Understanding the Qur’an: Themes and Style. I.B. Tauris, 2010.

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Follow us on:listeningreligiously.substack.comOr shoot us an email at:[email protected]Theme Song: Bedtime After A CoffeeComposer: Barradeen (Argentina)Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfTggY6U7d6XVre774B1_qgLicense: Free To Use YouTube license youtube-freeMusic powered by BreakingCopyright:

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Image: Muhammad’s name on the door of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.

Clarification: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani” is, in fact, Aramaic.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit listeningreligiously.substack.com