Religion Dispatches
…nd attitudes” of each state, I can guarantee that residents of my state of South Carolina would continue to hold slaves—never mind having separate drinking fountains. No matter how scholars like Perry want to spin it, the role of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution. For any legal scholar, no matter how long his resume or how distinguished his career, to argue otherwise is to reveal an agenda that undermines the very Constitution the Co…
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…aracters (the trickster Br’er Rabbit, for example) came directly from West African folkloric traditions. As H.L. Mencken was the first white writer to observe, Joel Chandler Harris basically stole a big chunk of African American oral tradition, popularized it, and got rich from it once he began publishing his tales in The Atlanta Constitution in 1876. Like Cody, Harris thought of himself as an entertainer, not as a paladin of white supremacist ide…
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…relationship with medical schools in two countries, and we were somewhere south of broke. But we slogged along and clung to each other and bitched each other out and slogged some more and some how all emerged with lasting relationships, advanced degrees, and upper-middle class incomes. Bart became an obstetrician/gynecologist—because, truth told, sick people really upset him. Also truth told, he did not perform abortions out of any political pass…
Read More…ndicated that he’s going to announce his intention to run for president—in South Carolina, as the big Republican event, the Ames straw poll, is taking place in Iowa. Surely he wants to suck all the air out of Michele Bachmann’s air-conditioned tent. With Bachmann generating the most excitement among voters in Iowa, Perry appears to be her primary rival for the coveted conservative Christian vote. And that raises the question: aside from his prayer…
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…tions can have a dramatic effect on how coronavirus spreads or doesn’t, as South Korea found out the hard way. While many aren’t meeting at all or are streaming services, some churches that do meet feel like they need to support those who need it, in worship or otherwise. My mother’s congregation in Madison, Wisconsin elected to close for a week or two, but also voted to continue to allow Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs to cont…
Read More…al years later, Hatfield teamed with Democratic senator George McGovern of South Dakota to draft the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to End the War in Vietnam. Hatfield’s liberal positions earned him the enmity of many politically-conservative evangelicals. But he remained resolute in his convictions, pushing for nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, aid for the poor and federal funding for medical research. I encountered Hatfield for the fir…
Read More…red for her faithfulness, despite her past sins. Just as philanderers like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford will claim King David as their political mascot, I think Prejean could go a long way to reviving the Rahab story, showing herself to be a deeply flawed woman of faith. Prejean also complained bitterly that there is a double standard at play against conservative women like herself and former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Pa…
Read More…egationist efforts to drive a wedge between Black and white workers in the South. As Holly Martins notes in The Daily, the legacy of the movement encompasses the ultra-conservative John Birch Society as well as “the influence of Biblical capitalism, which has long promoted the notion that the Bible endorses free enterprise and abhors socialism. The first executives in the National Association of Manufacturers argued unions were in open warfare aga…
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