As Funny as the Times Will Allow: Obama on Late Night TV
…medy is hard to take. Every bit as hard as tragedy. And potentially as cathartic. I’ll have more to say about that elusive, and ultimately religious, idea in some future columns….
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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer
…nd not just for one small locale but really something which described the relationship between God and man — that’s something which I think a president would carry in his heart. So when they said, for instance, that the creator had “endowed us with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I would seek to assure that those principles and values remain in America and that we help share them with other peopl…
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The Big Lie Misrepresentation in Louisiana “Seal of Confessional” Case
…Supreme Court’s decision “attacks the seal of Confession” and that to compel a priest to testify would be a violation of both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause, subjecting the priest to excommunication. If, in fact, a court did compel a priest to break the seal of Confession that would be a radical act. Good thing the court didn’t actually do any such thing. It only takes a brief review of the facts to reveal a far more, dare I say, judi…
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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)
…nge figure—an extreme loose cannon—underplay continuities between him and relatively more moderate conservatives, making allies with roughly similar ideas seem like lesser evils. So I wondered whether to acknowledge Robertson’s latest provocation. It bores me, and I feel cheapened even to think about it as I worry about one of my students who has not yet returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Still I could not resist clicking on a list of Robertso…
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Junior Falwell Unmasked Conservatism; Let’s Thank Him For It
…na, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.” By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul. What mobil…
Read MoreThe Jarring Ugliness of Beauty Queen Carrie Prejean
…e 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 than yours. The truth is this: Prejean’s privilege is unharmed. She can get atten…
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A Love Letter to #Exvangelicals and Those Deconstructing Their Toxic Faith
…intellectual honesty, courage, and fortitude to examine their most deeply held beliefs. Not just examine, but challenge and reject beliefs that shape how their entire world is constructed—beliefs that they have been told were unequivocally true, by their most trusted sources, since they were little—beliefs that have been deliberately and systematically ingrained. The reverse of indoctrination, the process of systematically pulling apart those beli…
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State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism
…ionalism, as if there were no contradiction between them. When he turned, relatively briefly, to foreign policy, Obama offered up a predictably more consistent Niebuhrian “realism.” He made his commitment to that view clear long ago, when he had to finesse the obvious embarrassment of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize while waging two wars: “Make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world… There will be times when nations… will find the use of force n…
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How Will We Teach About Sikhism After the Tragedy?
…in religious and educational approaches to the world. Long-term alliances between religious institutions, and the mutual engagement between different forms of expertise, are essential to this paradigm. Steven Prothero rightly has pointed out the profound religious illiteracy of most American citizens, and has called for an educational curriculum that includes the study of religion as a prerequisite for 21st-century citizenship. Even more importan…
Read MoreACLU and Thomas More Law Center Rush to Terry Jones Defense
…t Amendment has any meaning, it is that the government cannot suppress the free speech because it — or anyone else — disagrees with the speech.” The Thomas More Law Center has pledged to file a suit on Jones’ behalf. By the way, I’ve seen TMLC in action. Its lawyers defended the Dover school board in Kitzmiller v Dover. If Jones has any brains at all – and I’m not saying he does – he’ll get on the phone to the ACLU right now, begging its attorneys…
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