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Democratic Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Makes Faith 101 Misstep

By Daniel Schultz

…ing pattern with Buttigieg of pillorying his left flank as too hostile to Trump supporters and/or rural voters. A Democrat positioning him- or herself as a centrist transpartisan begins from a very weak position in a polarized society. Have we learned nothing from the Obama presidency? It’s bad politics, and it threatens to undermine more capable candidates. Look, it’s not wrong to say, “On a personal level, I know some conservative Christians who…

Dems Should Take Notes From Elizabeth Warren’s Pitch-Perfect Answer on Faith

By Daniel Schultz

…ds, and then she’s off like a shot into the meat of her response. In other words, she didn’t leave much for critics to pick at. Nor does she overplay her hand with a schmaltzy, long-winded story about John Wesley or her youth-group advisor. Conservatives are going to call her a phony anyway, but what of it? She tells the story the way she wants to tell it, without seeming to pander for the People-of-Faith vote. Which leads us to the other trap War…

Senators Can and Must Ask About Nominees’ Religious Beliefs

By Andrew L. Seidel

…line of attack is about politics, not the Constitution. Gabbard, who told CNN she was running for president three days after the op-ed was published, will face tough questions on the campaign trail because she grew up in what some have called a cult. Gabbard’s clumsy op-ed was intended as a political inoculation; she’ll vilify any attempt to ask critical questions about her religion. The cries of religious bigotry continued this week when Senator…

The Religious Right: Still Not Dead

By Frederick Clarkson

…gs for years, featuring ambitious Christian Right pols like Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz. He knows that building a movement is not solely about the fortunes of any one pol, issue, or election season. Among other things, he is now systematically recruiting conservative clergy to run for office at any and all levels. The Christian Right has, in fact, never been united around a single presidential primary candidate, with the sole exception of George…

Is This Finally the Reckoning for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?

By Patricia Miller

…nald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington—Wuerl helped formulate the Church’s rules for preventing sexual abuse by priests—for his role in shuffling predator priests around the state when he was the head of the Pittsburgh diocese. But the recently announced U.S. attorney’s investigation marks a major turning point and a potential moment of reckoning in the long-running and sordid sex abuse scandal that first burst into public view with the Boston Glo…

Dehumanizing Huckabee Tweet Another Echo of Dangerous Tribalism

By Bradley Onishi

…ght and something legal in this country. In a morning tweet on June 19th, Trump used the word “infest” to describe immigrants entering the country. Like a good tribalist, Trump has no use for nuance such as the right to asylum. It’s either “us” or “them”; there can be no middle ground, no third category, no space for discussion, debate, or dialogue. The dangers of this way of thinking are obvious. I want to focus on one: tribal epistemology uses d…

It’s Preposterous That We Can’t Question Nominees on Religion

By Patricia Miller

…prevent the kind of rigorous questioning of a judicial nominee’s religious worldview that’s even more necessary in the post-Hobby Lobby world. The idea that a nominee’s (or a candidate’s) religion can never be questioned is a throwback to the infamous attack on John F. Kennedy by a group calling itself the National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom, led by Methodist minister Norman Vincent Peale, which claimed that Kennedy couldn’t be t…

What Happens When An American President Believes He is Above the Law?

By Spencer Dew

…, come as a surprise. Days previous, at a campaign rally in Nevada, where Trump reiterated a worldview of crisis, pitting, in Margaret Talbot’s words, “the virtuous ‘we’ and the unspecified ‘they,’ who are trying to take away ‘our’ customs and culture; the ‘thugs,’ who protest the leader’s vision of America,” Trump had made clear that the Arpaio pardon was imminent. Pardoning “Sheriff Joe,” as Arpaio is known to his fans, allowed the President to…

The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

By Spencer Dew

…s trying to make their way in a changing economy” could counter the famous words of Lazarus. Lamentably for conservatives, Miller didn’t go there. “Statue of arrogance,” is how a barbed statement from the Anne Frank Center describes his dismissal of the poem. Lazarus’s biographer weighed in on the scene, describing Miller as “a Trump apologist telling a reporter that a revered American poem must be dismissed on the ground that it’s a fake law (Mil…

Spiritual Mapping Evangelicals Battle Vodou in Haiti

By Reza Aslan

…eply disturbing subset of evangelical Christianity. For in linking all the world’s ills with demonic forces, the Spiritual Mapping movement engages in what to me is a truly evil act: the manipulation of the poor and hungry by the wealthy and well-fed all in the name of whose religion is best. Safa Samiezade-Yazd provided additional reporting for this article. You can read McAlister’s article on Spiritual Mapping in Haiti here. Elizabeth McAlister….