Religion Dispatches
An old friend expressed confusion last night after reading the new Pew Research Poll focusing on white evangelicals. “Where’s the surprise?” he asked. There is no surprise. Not much, anyway. What we have here is a case of Lucy managing to pull the football out from under poor old Charlie Brown, again. We go through this every four years: there’s a flurry of articles wondering Is This The End Of The Religious Right?, pointing to the emergence of a…
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…ly than they’d been accustomed to doing. Scholars argue whether or not the New Deal helped or hindered the nation’s recovery, and if it fundamentally altered or safeguarded capitalism, yet its influence on American values and identity shaped successive generations. Alongside older notions of self-help and limited government, the New Deal fostered acceptance of a strong centralized state actively involved with its citizens’ material well-being. The…
Read More…civil unions. These developments please a lot of people; the press gets a new narrative and the Democrats eye a widening pool of potential evangelical voters. Two recent books, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right by E.J. Dionne and The Party Faithful: How And Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap by Amy Sullivan, both describe a changing situation in which evangelicals and other serious religious people will not au…
Read More…ell as the appeal to “remove the veil from their hearts.” According to the New York Times, the new prayer may be translated as follows: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” The prayer also expresses hope that “all Israel may be saved.” What many may not realize is that both the old and the new Good Friday prayers are citing the apostle Paul. The re…
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…G). Meanwhile, the NAR is a racially and culturally diverse coalition that promotes Christian Zionism as fervently as it promotes Christian nationalism in the US. And while the NAR’s philosemitism can itself be deeply problematic, it certainly isn’t as threatening as White supremacy’s conspiracy-laden antisemitism. However, as recently as the mid-twentieth century, the movements actually were the same. William Branham (1909-1965) was a revivalist…
Read More…thinks creationism should be taught in the public schools. As part of the new project, AIG and Ark Encounter also say they are seeking tax breaks from the state, an announcement which has raised the eyebrows of constitutional watchdogs. According to the Courier-Journal: Gov. Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson declined to answer questions Tuesday about possible incentives for the project. The developers are seeking incentives under the Kentucky…
Read More…icy norms back toward faith and family values.” Speaking of U.S. policy, a New York Times commentary by Ernesto Lodoño on May 26 reviewed U.S. policy promoting the idea promulgated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that “gay rights are human rights.” When President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1995 barring the government from denying security clearances solely on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, the Family Resear…
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…h, Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan administrations, and beyond. Racism is not new. Misogyny is not new. Xenophobia is not new. Our government’s continued alliances with fascists and theocrats? Not new. The things marginalized people are fighting today are frightening because their consequences are in our present and we can foresee further harm—but we must remember our past. I have spent a lot of time since November talking with people who grew up dur…
Read MoreNew Washington Post On Faith blogger Jordan Sekulow wrote on the eve of the DADT repeal, “social conservatives are not enraged about the end of DADT.” If that’s true, then halleleujah. But just one month ago Sekulow wrote in the same pages, “If DADT is repealed, the American Center for Law & Justice is committed to advocating for the ability of military chaplains to do their job according to the dictates of their faith. The ACLJ has a long histor…
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This morning, PRRI released a new study on religious change in the US with implications for understanding support for White Christian nationalism and its avatar, Donald Trump. Those implications fall into two broad categories: religious change and the faith identity of Trump’s followers. To set the scene for the first category, let’s list some general points of interest: Mainline Protestants outnumber evangelicals by a very slim margin Only nine…
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