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Sharbat Gula’s Experience Exemplifies the ‘White Savior’ Lens Through Which Most Americans View Afghanistan

By Sara Kamali

…2021, Sharbat Gula received a welcome to Rome by the Italian government. While this resettlement may seem like a positive outcome from McCurry’s photo, during the few interviews that have featured her, Sharbat Gula points out that she needed to be resettled precisely because McCurry’s photo made her a target of the Taliban regime “who don’t believe women should appear in the media.” Speaking in her native language of Pashto to reporters with the…

Three Cheers for Mormon Support of Same-Sex Legislation? Not So Fast

By Chrissy Stroop

…osexuality and the rest of the LGBTQ spectrum. In fairness, the LDS leadership going even this far in terms of accommodating those outside the church and its understanding of morality, when the Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention remain staunchly opposed, does represent a remarkable shift from the days of LDS support of California’s Proposition 8. That should be acknowledged. In so doing, however, there’s no need to, as it were, m…

The Endurance Of Christian Reconstructionism

By Sarah Posner

…be tied to Christian Reconstructionism, both through the subject matter of his thesis and his advisor Herb Titus. Now comes Star Parker, a favorite on the religious right speaking circuit for being a walking example of how a welfare queen who had had multiple abortions can be transformed into a conservative Christian icon. Parker — an early endorser of Huckabee in 2008 — is now running for Congress in the 37th district of California, and hopes to…

How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

By Peter Laarman

…/Dugard book in here on RD.] Keddie then traces the formative influences behind this strange figure before concluding the book with a granular discussion of specific Republican Jesus “positions” on issues ranging from family life and sexuality, to charity, taxes, guns, immigration, climate change, and even Zionism. He illustrates how the Christian Right gaslights Americans on each and every one of these. It’s important to note right away what this…

Are Conservatives Really More in Touch with the Founding Fathers?

By Joanna Brooks

…God” to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence) offered a standard by which just government might be measured. To say the same thing differently, the founders’ world view held that there was an objective standard of right and wrong and that that standard was tied to nature. Modern conservatism and modern liberalism are complicated. To the extent that either ascribe to a standard of right and wrong tied to nature (or nature and nature’s God) th…

DeSantis’ Religious Exemption Will Kill—And it Violates the 1st Amendment

By Andrew L. Seidel

…e or how many people are infected, to allow large gatherings in churches. This worship exemption is triply problematic. First, there’s no legal reason to exempt churches from orders that temporarily halt large gatherings. Americans have rights to worship and to assemble, but neither of those rights is unlimited and neither includes the right to risk other peoples’ lives. Like all states, Florida already regularly limits worship gatherings that jeo…

Beck & Palin Rake in the 9/11 Cash

By Becky Garrison

…arity of choice that received a grade of F from the American Institute of Philanthropy. While Beck & Palin will rake in the cash promoting their brand of patriotism, President Obama will be appearing at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington on Sept. 11, where he will deliver remarks and take part in a wreath-laying ceremony. Michelle Obama and Laura Bush plan to honor victims of the attacks in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, while Vice President Joe Biden…

Huckabee’s Super Tuesday Resurrection

By Ira Chernus

…bee lost in every other state by large margins. (By a strange coincidence, his losing number was exactly the same in the giants, New York and California: a not so resounding eleven percent.) Before dawn, the pundits had looked at those numbers too, and Huckabee’s “resurrection” had largely disappeared from the headlines. Now you see the evangelicals, now you don’t, now you do again, now you don’t again. It was a replay, in miniature, of the 2004 e…

Alabama Yoga Debate Focusing on the Wrong Question

By Candy Gunther Brown

…s taxes are a “religious infringement” because yoga is a form of “orthodox Hindu philosophy” by means of which “the human-soul (jivatman) unite[s] with the universal-soul (paramatman).” Yet, Zed now argues that yoga will do nothing to promote Hinduism? Regardless of how Alabama resolves its latest bout on yoga, it seems unlikely that controversies over yoga—or the often-paired practice of mindfulness meditation—will disappear any time soon. Indeed…

How End-of-Life Issues Are Being Used to Thwart Health Care Reform

By Ann Neumann

…d, searching for the right word, “uncommented on thing[s] was this Terri Schiavo thing. It really turned a lot.” Perhaps Boehner and his Republican colleagues learned a lesson in 2005 when they tried to insert themselves into the Schiavo family’s private grapple with faith and end-of-life issues. (If the public remembers the Schiavo issue as partisan, RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s comment, also on Friday, that Obama’s health care reform will “make…