Religion Dispatches
…time gospel preachers who used the summer to set up their tents across America, traveling in buses and spreading the “good news.” Palin’s bus tour takes that strategy up a notch: it is the “Where’s Waldo” evangelical-political tour bus, touting the “good news” of Palin and her commitment to the “Fundamental Restoration of America.” The reward for those with the stamina to chase her down: a photo opportunity with Palin chatting it up with hoi poll…
Read More…y quotes Funda Soldaat, who runs a shoe-string support organization called Free Gender: “Even if you know how the constitution works, you don’t know how to use it to protect yourself. If you don’t have money you don’t have access to the justice system. Violence in the townships is normal. Homosexuality is [seen as] un-African. Patriarchy is everywhere. The way religious leaders read scripture is painful. Children start raping at 14, 15 and take pi…
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…also challenged the rule. They claimed the rule violated their “religious freedom” because it hampered their Bible study. There was no burden on their religion. They all could have met virtually. They could have studied the Bible on their own. But the pandemic was politicized and they were out to claim their Christian privilege. A three-judge panel—two W. appointees and a Trump appointee—ruled 2-1 that the rule was valid because it treated religi…
Read More…ffered to him by James Salt of Catholics United, at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference last week. Salt was working with Faithful America, an affiliated organization of Faith in Public Life. Some progressives think this is noteworthy, or at least revealing about Ryan’s true faith. Digby, for example, highlighted it on her blog, which I found curious since she’s been so critical of what she terms “the Religion Industrial Complex.” D…
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…to say about religion other than the fact that it makes no sense as an empirical claim. That’s just too obvious to be interesting. I think that we as a society deserve a better form of atheism. Another of the interesting moves you make is you effectively leave the anthropomorphic God “in place,” which is a definite contrast to the attempts to deconstruct the God of metaphysics in the work of philosophers like Jean-Luc Marion and Richard Kearney. W…
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…n. Anytime you have a stratified society in which there is a strong divide between elites and masses or between rich and poor, those who find themselves in a disadvantaged position naturally feel resentment. That resentment can be a powerful tool of democratic social change, but it can also be a tool of oppression—depending on where the emotion is directed. Historically, resentment has been the emotion that elites feared the most—because it inspir…
Read More…ts own, that thousands of children and vulnerable adults have suffered because church leaders refuse to give up power. Alas, the hierarchy rejects change, manically swatting it away at every turn while Catholics exit in droves. Even so timid a move as ordaining women deacons—that is, sacramentalizing and acknowledging that the bulk of the church’s ministry is now done by women—is too much for these men. Asked about the work of the commission he se…
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…n Walt Whitman, in his wide-ranging essay, “Democratic Vistas.” “I shall use the words America and democracy as convertible terms,” Whitman begins. Then he devotes the remainder of the essay to his passionate plea for the creation of a distinctively American kind of art—which is to say, a distinctively democratic literature. Why literature? And, more broadly speaking, why the arts? These remain urgent questions today. The reason? Because, Whit…
Read More…fy all your innermost desires: Jesus Christ.” The Secular Coalition for America and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have both raised constitutional concerns about Strong Bonds. But the retired chaplains’ complaint — that they would be forced to teach marriage-strengthening classes to gay and lesbian people — is a prime example of the “collision course” the religious right has created between the separation of church and state and the eva…
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…me fanatically loyal to an infallible elite. One hopes, for the sake of American democracy, that we can together strike a wise balance between suspicion and deference with respect to expertise. The greater danger right now is brazen suspicion run amok. Unfortunately, as the history of the Reformation shows, once independent thought is set free, it’s hard to tame it again. Add depoliticizing expertise to the long list of challenges we face in the u…
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