Word: clerical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...salvation as earned, a function of one's merit. Like many people, Luther was periodically paralyzed by fear that his merit might fall short. He was also angry that the church, as age-old intermediary between believer and God, was profiting from this fear. For a price, the appropriate cleric would perform merit-building practices like prayer, penance or pilgrimage on one's behalf. The sale of such "indulgences" financed many a medieval cathedral. Retreating to his New Testament, Luther considered St. Paul's letter to the Romans. Human "works," preached Paul, could not affect anyone's eternal life; "Justification...
Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dour cleric who led an Islamic revolution in Iran, perceived himself above all as an avenger of the humiliations that the West had for more than a century inflicted on the Muslims of the Middle East...
Khomeini was then the disciple of Iran's pre-eminent cleric, Ayatullah Mohammed Boroujerdi, a defender of the tradition of clerical deference to established power. But in 1962, after Boroujerdi's death, Khomeini revealed his long-hidden wrath and acquired a substantial following as a sharp-tongued antagonist of the Shah...
...American wrestlers win friends in the streets of Tehran, their presence appears to be infuriating Iran's conservatives. When the Stars and Stripes drew enthusiastic cheers at the opening ceremony of an international wrestling tourney, a conservative cleric urged parliament to reject the presence of the flag "which we used to trample underfoot only last year," and led legislators in the ritual chant of "Death to America...
...Practice Circle, where the talk is free and her view is not privileged. "The center is in the process of redefining its mission," she acknowledges. "This is a very complex place. We are trying to figure out how to live and learn together." It is a notion no Zen cleric would have expressed until American Buddhism led the way. Of course, so is the idea of a female head priest...