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Denying Darwin: Another Peculiar American Institution

By Lauri Lebo

…everyone’s voice carries equal weight. It’s a beautiful notion. But the pro-intelligent design organizations like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute take that notion and distort it to bolster their perspective: “If you don’t treat what we’re saying as equally valid then you’re discriminating against us.” Basically saying that “You’re being intolerant of our intolerance.” But in that deception they steal the best of who we are as Americans. They…

The Traitor Chaplain Who Gave Government Prayer to America — A 4th of July Corrective

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ded over a loyalist congregation but was willing to affiliate with the soon-to-be rebels. Sam Adams only approved of Duché because he “had heard that Mr. Duché” was a “Friend to his Country,” despite being part of King George III’s church. In other words, this prayer proposal wasn’t about religion or about the delegates joining hands for worship. This was realpolitik. It was strategic piety. John Adams recorded in his diary the observation of anot…

The Most Forgotten Queer Folks in the US are Fighting Back Against a Powerful — and Publicly Funded — Group That Discriminates With Impunity

By Chrissy Stroop

…plied as follows: REAP is a movement to empower LGBTQ+ students at taxpayer-funded, non-affirming religious educational institutions. We give these students a voice by holding their institutions accountable for the harm they inflict on them and by calling out the complicity of the government, accrediting organizations and other institutions that enable this discrimination to continue. We also support and amplify the organic student movements on th…

A Palin Pastor Primer

By Esther Kaplan

…reationism in schools or eliminating standard sex ed in favor of abstinence-only. Then again, she’s only been in office for 20 months. Most troubling are two more telling incidents: One has now been widely discussed: In 1996 Palin approached the Wasilla librarian about whether she’d be willing to censor some books, should citizens have concerns about inappropriate language; a few months after the librarian refused to consider such a thing, Palin s…

From Christian Temperance to D.A.R.E. — The War on Drugs Has its Roots in White Christian Nationalism

By Andrew Monteith

…he generation that grew up with Temperance Education (at its height between 1883 and 1906) went on to pass Prohibition in 1920, we might pause to question what the Narcotic Education Week generation (1923–1937) went on to do 30–40 years later. The 1960s and 1970s brought a wave of new antidrug measures, many of which were stricter than what already existed, including the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The 1960s media and legislative discourse…

RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?

By Bill Berkowitz

…vent. He has also written extensively about anti-abortion terrorism in the United States. In 1997, Clarkson wrote Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy (Common Courage Press), one of the earliest books about the conservative evangelical movement which has become an integral part of the American political landscape. More recently, Clarkson, along with blogger Bruce Wilson, founded Talk2Action, an interactive blog covering…

A Tea Party Leader Hates Christians

By Sarah Posner

…as “little more than the first Church of Karl Marx,” was incensed that the United Methodist Building (known to locals as “the God box”) on Capitol Hill had a sign supporting the DREAM Act. (h/t Religion News Service). “After all,” Phillips adds, “what can you say about a church that considers Hillary Clinton to be a member in good standing?” Phillips goes on to call the church “the religious arm of socialism” because it supports “illegal immigrati…

Christian Nationalists Aim to Dismantle this Core Freedom

By Andrew L. Seidel

…, but one of our country’s unique contributions to humanity. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gary Wills put it nicely in his 1990 book, Under God: Religion and American Politics. The separation of state and church: “more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth… . Everything else in our Constitution—separation of powers, balanced government, bicameralism, federalism—had been anticipated both in theory and practice. . . . But w…

Talking Prop. 8: Of Rites and Rights

By Peter Laarman

…d even that is sort of ambiguous: Bells will ring, The sun will shine (whoa-whoa-whoa) I’ll be his and, He’ll be mine. That I could be another guy, you know. I’m sure a lot of my more conservative Christian friends are going to read this and wonder how could I be happy about the ruling overturning Proposition 8. Well, I can truly say that I am. I want people to be happy. As someone who spent quite a bit of time of her early adult life wishing she…

Christian Nationalist Bestseller Rooted in Volk, Homeland, and Patriarchy is ‘Blood Relation’ of a Certain 20th Century German Manifesto

By Bradley Onishi

…Wolfe’s approach extends to a troubling analysis of race relations in the United States. Eight months ago, Wolfe stated in an article at IM-1776 that he believes Black people are more prone to lawlessness. “For complex reasons, blacks in America, considered as a group, are reliable sources for criminality, and their criminality increases when constraints diminish,” Wolfe writes. “Despite being around 13% of the US population, blacks have consiste…