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Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…n and encourage the idea that the body of Christ is segregated by race and class. To people of color who have spent centuries being shunned or diminished by white evangelicals, anything less than acknowledgment, and changed behavior, specifically from Bible-toting white men who’ve manipulated scriptural teachings in order to keep Black people in both literal and proverbial chains, will be as fake as it is antagonistic. The acknowledgment that Blac…

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…on by introducing an invocation to Patanjali at the beginning of each yoga class, though he insisted that while yoga was a part of an ancient South Asian yoga transmission it was not specific to any religious tradition and was universally accessible. In 1975, Iyengar established the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, named after his wife who had died in 1973. The Institute, which functioned as the center for teacher training, greatly aug…

Ghana’s LGBT Population Safe From Persecution, But Not Prosecution

By Warren Throckmorton

…rday that current Ghanaian law does not criminalize gays and lesbians as a class of people, but rather “unnatural carnal acts.” She added that the prosecution of people suspected of being gay would require a change in Ghana’s laws. Just over a week after being cited as favoring decriminalization of homosexuality, Lamptey added that she was “misquoted and therefore misrepresented.” Ms. Lamptey, a recent appointment by President John Atta Mills to h…

The Jihadi Revolution is Dead (But Bin Laden’s Death Didn’t Kill It)

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…imagine. It was a series of massive nonviolent movements of largely middle class and relatively young professionals who organized their protests through Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of electronic social networking. There was also a religious element to the protests. The peak moments came after Friday prayers, when sympathetic mullahs would urge the faithful into joining the protest as a religious duty. But theirs was not the divisive, hatefu…

Planetary Profiling: Dr. Who Part II

By James F. McGrath

…ilitary commander who identifies himself as “Father Octavian—Bishop Second Class, 20 clerics at my command.” Clearly there is some interesting church history in the thirty centuries between that future and our present, but the episode doesn’t explore it, beyond a throwaway line to the effect that “it’s the 51st century—the church has moved on.” Of course, Father Octavian isn’t what’s exciting about this episode. It’s the return of the Weeping Ange…

6 Words Not in RNC Autopsy: Christian, Religion, Abortion, Marriage, Jesus, God

By Sarah Posner

…oposed fixes: enacting comprehensive immigration reform, addressing middle-class economic anxieties head-on, and condensing a presidential primary process that saw Mitt Romney get battered for months ahead of the general election. The committee also proposes major improvements to the party’s voter database and digital technology, which paled next to that of the Democrats and contributed to the party’s losses last year. The suggestions are among do…

Why Won’t Conservatives Call Gay-Bashing a Hate Crime?

By Eric Reitan

…ligious conservatives might be eager to avoid having such violence legally classified as hate crime. Hate crimes have been singled out for special legal status largely because they are recognized to be the most overt expressions of an oppressive ideology. By an “oppressive ideology” I mean a belief system that views the marginalization, oppression, or even destruction of an identified “out-group” as good in itself. If this out-group flourishes, if…

Obama Shaking Hands with Warren While Winking at Gays?

By Jonathan L. Walton

…ized welfare queen. This allowed him to appeal to the bourgeoning suburban class while scapegoating government programs that assist the poor for the eradication of the industrial economy. You see, Ronald Reagan understood that offending a perceived powerless political bloc paled in comparison to galvanizing majority sentiments. Thus, with seemingly vacuous symbolic gestures that resonated among particular yet powerful communities, he sacrificed th…

Does Church Temper Trump Voters’ Views on Race? New Report Whitewashes Conservative Christian Problem

By Timothy Gloege

…tions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class,” 87% of religious conservatives disagree. They apparently believe African-American poverty is completely unrelated to centuries of slavery and discrimination. Yet three-quarters of these voters claim that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” All this contradicts the assertion that religious…

Big MoPublican Primary 2012: Dignity Watch

By Joanna Brooks

…ind me of the premium Mormon culture has placed on clean-cut all-American likeability. Since the middle of the twentieth-century, that’s been the ticket we’ve tried to ride away from our frontier origins and melt into the suburban middle class. And still, Mormons consistently find our faith ranking consistently low in public esteem. Perhaps there is a lesson in all of this for the Big MoPublican Primary contenders? When it comes to faith and polit…