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Why So Many American Christians Don’t Understand Protest

…g to bow to them, instead creating a new holy space where the oppressed go free. What better moment to consider our place as faithful Christians than during this season of Advent? In a time when American Christianity has perhaps sold its soul for 30 pieces of silver, taking refuge in the security of a violent empire, we would do well to remember that our good news first came as an act of divine protest in the body of a poor, brown baby born in a b…

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As Funny as the Times Will Allow: Obama on Late Night TV

…agedy, but it exists in uneasy relation to morality. Comic artists must be free to offend, free to be mean. This doesn’t mean that there should be no restriction on what the comedian can say, by the way; not at all. Comedians, like all artists, need constraints in order to show off their creative virtuosity. It is the audiences that need to restrain themselves; they need to permit themselves a laugh. Or not. The question, then, is not whether it w…

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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

…inciple. As I wrote at the time, Romney had a conundrum: needing to defend free exercise of religion (an in particular, his religion), but realizing that the Republican base demands the “Judeo-Christian” answer. Given that many conservative evangelicals don’t even think Romney’s religion is part of Christianity, when he gave the “Judeo-Christian” answer last night I cringed—because he didn’t balance it with a free exercise answer. In other words,…

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The Big Lie Misrepresentation in Louisiana “Seal of Confessional” Case

The systematic abuse of the free exercise clause strikes again. In this latest episode, according to bloggers at Hot Air and the American Conservative, “[t]he Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional,” and “Fr. Bayhi will have to go to jail to protect the seal of the confessional.” These pundits can, to some extent, be forgiven for these misleading statements since the Catholic C…

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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

…experiments—imagining how the United States could disintegrate into a war between the righteous and unrighteous—is not necessarily a problem. Many kinds of legitimate dissent and hopes for the future can be channeled through prophetic images. Some of these are harmless or even constructive. Still, the more that these thoughts point toward the sorts of actions that Robertson seems to consider appropriate, the more disturbing they are; bordering on…

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Junior Falwell Unmasked Conservatism; Let’s Thank Him For It

…slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants. Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see….

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This Year in Satanism

…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…

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Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

…advantage of the crisis to restructure the economy in favor of the radical free market. It was this period—the end of the 1960s and early 1970s—when the business community embarked on a war of ideas to take back the country from the “radicals” who had been undermining faith in the free market. One of their targets for conversion was the country’s religious leadership. Using both the carrot (invitations to all-expenses paid weekend retreats where t…

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The Jarring Ugliness of Beauty Queen Carrie Prejean

…e is going to the polls to vote on whether or not Prejean has the right to free speech. No one is voting on whether or not she should be allowed to live freely in our society. Voter after voter has been allowed to go to the polls and vote about my right to marry and my right to keep my job and my right to fair housing. If you want to get into a pissing match over violation of rights, Miss Prejean, bring it on, because mine is definitely bigger tha…

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State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism

…e blessed by a unique ability—indeed destiny—to be free of conflict, to be free of the past, to “believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible.” Anything? Really? You can almost hear the pantheon of European Christian theologians groaning from their graves in disbelief.        But, hey, this is the New World where the frontier has traditionally offered the eternal lure of new beginnings and limitless wealth, even…

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