Religion Dispatches
…rst time. These are the type of experiences that shaped me, that shape all Southerners. In Sacred Cause Desmond and Moore argue, with overwhelming evidence, that Darwin, too, was immersed in issues of race from the day he was born, and that his abhorrence for racism shaped him and the theories and ideas for which he’s famous. Darwin, as we see in Sacred Cause, following in his grandfather’s and in-laws’ footsteps, was a passionate abolitionist. Bu…
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…tly runs into creationists training to be educators. “It’s not only in the South, or in rural areas,” Wiles said. Wiles recently held a workshop for 30 science teachers in the Syracuse city school system. Three of the teachers were actively interested in promoting intelligent design. He suspects that the reason that so few cases make it to the public stage is that many parents aren’t always aware of what’s going on in the classroom. Also, children…
Read More…ate Fred Thompson, a rival who helped sink Huckabee’s upstart ambitions in South Carolina, is somewhat more favorable, if only because it is less personal”: Fred Thompson never did grasp the dynamics of the race or the country, and his amazingly lackluster campaign reflected just how disconnected he was with the people, despite the anticipation and expectation that greeted his candidacy. “Many conservative Christian leaders,” including Gary Bauer,…
Read More…s, Three Shots at Ending or Limiting Abortion Rights Ballot initiatives in South Dakota, Colorado and California threaten to end or limit abortion rights. In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists have resuscitated a measure than failed to pass two years ago, by softening the language in the initiative, “includ[ing] language purporting to make exceptions for incest, rape or the life and health of the mother,” a recent New York Times editorial point…
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…order that the rights of all members of the society may be maintained and promoted, we support innovative bargaining procedures that include representatives of the public interest in negotiation and settlement of labor-management contracts, including some that may lead to forms of judicial resolution of issues. We reject the use of violence by either party during collective bargaining or any labor/management disagreement. We likewise reject the p…
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…ievers bracing for a circus sideshow. Traveling across America to speak on freethought and abolitionism during the 19th century, white feminist atheist Ernestine Rose was smeared as being a “thousand times below a prostitute.” Centuries after Rose, the association of faith with female virtue and morality is still pervasive in our post-feminist post-racial Christian nation. Indeed, for some women of color, being “married to Jesus” is the only lifel…
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…the past that had kept North Carolina from being fully captured in the Old South (or the old South Africa for that matter). They will tell you that these politicians are not Republicans but reactionaries who fear a multicultural progressive future for North Carolina. Whether in fact the emerging diversity of the state’s population will create a more robust democracy is an open question, but the current legislature does not seem willing to take tha…
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…fear Europe’s failures will be revealed. There is no denying the European south is suffering, but if the Eurozone dies, there may be worse consequences, a revenge of a Europe we had thought buried. Though not as long as you might think. Already, the Eurozone’s crisis has overturned Serbia’s government, bringing to power a new leader who wasted no time denying that genocide took place in Srebrenica in 1995 (Apparently, accession to the EU isn’t wh…
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…on graduated from a formerly Baptist liberal arts college also deep in the South. His graduation exercises, including a baccalaureate service, were characterized by a multi-faith ethos. The baccalaureate was especially striking, with readings and rituals from Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sources. The address from the university president emphasized the centrality of “the spirit” rather than just material success. The commencement…
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…he problem, as he sees it, is that King didn’t try to preach the gospel of freedom to Southern evangelical folk, instead coming across as a “highfalutin’ liberal” who wanted to impress mainstream churchmen and liberals. He concludes: Here I encounter what has long been, for me, a troubling aspect of King’s leadership of the civil-rights movement. He made little or no appeal to the mass of white Christians in the South—the Baptists, the evangelical…
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