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

By Mark Hulsether

…January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, it’s fascinating to revisit my 12-year-old warning about how Robertson shaped his listeners’ imaginations and expectations to make such a thing more likely. At the time I wrote, it wasn’t clear what proportion of his imagined scenarios about end-times were best understood as a sort of imaginative wish-fulfillment—like Hollywood entertainment or twisted dream-work—as opposed to something on track to be e…

“Cult” Cinema Comes of Age

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…geles suburbs. Brit Marling, who seems to be showing up all over lately, co-wrote and co-starred as a charismatic leader who has returned from the year 2054 to help those in need get by. There’s a Blair Witch feeling to it as the two investigators begin with the premise that the followers—the “real” followers, not them—are weak “suckers” looking for meaning, and are willing to be led into strange basements. Vulnerabilities break out all around as…

Op-Ed: A Few Things I Wish Barack Obama Had Said

By Garret Keizer

…petroleum, I damn America. If I put my key into the ignition of a ten mile-per-gallon SUV, I damn America. If I vote for candidates like George W. Bush and bills like the Patriot Act, I damn America. After such infernal cussing as that, who should give so much as a good Goddamn about the niceties of my table grace? On Whether Jesus Is A Way or The Way to Salvation He’s the only way for me—but were I to make the question you have just asked a litm…

Another Manufactured Outrage: Rep. Ilhan Omar Did Nothing Wrong in Listing Hamas, Israel, and U.S. Together

By Joshua Shanes

…its right to do so has been ratified by over 100 countries, though not the United States or Israel. Her question was not particularly controversial: “If domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice,” she asked, “and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice?” She specifically noted that she meant accusations against all sides, Israel and Hamas, the Afghan government and the Taliban, and the Unite…

Who Would the Buddha Bomb?

By Danny Fisher

…nd cultural context of American Buddhism, the development of this new cyber-sangha of American Buddhist soldiers represents a new generation’s answer to the predominantly anti-war Buddhism of 1960s and 1970s that continues to define Buddhism in the public imagination,” he writes. Elsewhere, two titans of Theravada Buddhism in the United States have found themselves at loggerheads over their differing views about defensive war. In one of the final…

What’s Wrong with Wright’s Words

By Andrew Murphy

…Return, O faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness. (Jeremiah 3: 19-22) It’s not every day that one hears a pastor exhorting his congregation to sing “God Damn America.” The firestorm of controversy over the comments by Barack Obama’s senior pastor and spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and the address on race that the comments prompted Obama to deliver on March 18) have stirred up a hornet’s nest of accusation and recrimination. B…

Welcome to the (New) Gilded Age: Supreme Court Delivers the Goods to Corporations

By Peter Laarman

…n to a Republican coup d’etat; however, Citizens United is not merely court-sanctioned, but court-engineered, amounting to a judicial coup d’etat executed in behalf of the already-ascendant money power in our society. Noting that this ruling will likely benefit Republicans much more than Democrats is really beside the point; the point—the well-sharpened and deadly point—is that Citizens United will vastly strengthen the hand of the predatory class…

Same-Sex Marriage May Lead to Polygamy, But So What?

By William E. Smith

…s quite a bit of rhetorical and political continuity between the nineteenth-century anti-polygamy cause and today’s. Claims that same-sex marriage and polygamy are social experiments that will adversely affect children serve to limit women’s (and other people’s) options. Sheff discovered, for instance, that triads with one woman and two men were the most stable form of polyamorous relationship. Legalizing polygamy would be a way to increase the cu…

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

By Chip Berlet

…udiences of folks concerned about rising prejudice and bigotry. After April 19, 1995, people began to take Ward more seriously, as bodies were removed from the Oklahoma City Federal Building, collapsed by a truck bomb delivered by a domestic terrorist seeking to shift the right-wing populists into an armed insurrection. Timothy McVeigh failed to achieve his goal, but 168 people died in the process. On January 19, the people of Massachusetts electe…

Global Precap: 5 Religion and LGBT Stories to Look For in 2015

By Peter Montgomery

…the bishops charged that the World Health Organization and a European anti-domestic-violence effort were sowing sexual confusion among youth. Critics argued that church officials were using the campaign as a distraction from sex abuse allegations. Conservatives have been fighting about gender at international bodies for a long time. But the use of “gender ideology” as a propaganda tool against feminism, LGBT equality, and even the existence of tr…