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Rand Paul’s Messianic Campaign Video Shouts “Yes I Can!”

…recites his mild variation on the usual rote declamation: “It’s time for a new way, a new set of ideas…and above all it’s time for a new president.” We’re invited to “Join the movement.” The latter notion worked so well for candidate Obama, although his campaign struggled to figure out how to translate the energy of so many young people into practical action after the inauguration. But the key difference between Paul’s rhetoric and the last succes…

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Ground Zero is Sacred Space, But Not Just Because of 9/11

…into the fact that the loudest critics of Park51, notably Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, are not New Yorkers and represent a political movement not generally associated with the rights of minorities. The most ringing defense of the proposed Islamic center came from Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and a Jew. “We would betray our values—and play into our enemies’ hands—if we were to treat Muslims differently than [sic] anyone else,” the ma…

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The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

…political benefit from attacking cultural symbols of “the sixties.” Every new round brings new symbolic issues, however. In 2004, much media attention was focused on social issues like abortion and gay rights. In fact, though, more careful post-election studies found that the key to Bush’s success was the voters’ fear of terrorism. Yet for the many churchgoers who voted Republican because they were still seeking the spirituality of dwelling, the…

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New Anti-Gay Snake Oil for Religious Right

Focus on the Family can hardly contain its glee over a new study that purports to show that “children raised by homosexual parents are dramatically more likely than peers raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from a host of social problems.” Calling this study “the gold standard” of same-sex parenting studies, FoF’s affiliate CitizenLink crowed that among those “social problems” were “strong tendencies, as adults, to exhibit poor impuls…

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Vivek Ramaswamy Represents the Convergence of White Supremacy and Hindu Supremacy — And He May Well Be Trump’s Running Mate

…nother VHP of America affiliate, Vibhuti Jha, also ran for state office in New York in 2022 as a Republican, and has become a close associate of the infamous anti-Muslim ideologue Robert Spencer, who is a recurring guest on his popular talk show, and has found in the Hindu far-right a pathway to renewing a flagging audience. As a consequence, Hindu supremacist positions are increasingly taking on a partisan hue. The VHP of America’s advocacy wing…

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A New Frontier for Democrats and Religion?

…s might have talked about peace and poverty, but Francis’s much-discussed “new tone” seems like a permission slip for Democrats to talk religion without a full scale showdown on culture war issues. That said, there are topics apparently left undiscussed: a new war on LGBT people in Russia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, not to mention that elephant in the room with all things Francis, what freedom means for half the world’s population, women. Obama and K…

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New Poll: Evangelicals Backing Trump

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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Shutdown is Over, But There Will Be a Next Time

…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…

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The Omission of the “New” Evangelicals

…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…

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