…s be altered or shut down to accommodate their religious beliefs. In 2020, Texas father Alexander Deanda—represented by Jonathan F. Mitchell, the architect of Texas’s S.B. 8 abortion ban—filed a lawsuit in an attempt to obstruct Title X, the federal government’s long standing family planning program. Title X is a federal grant program created in 1970 by President Nixon to provide contraceptive and related healthcare to low-income and uninsured pat…
…nd remains a network of apostolic leaders. Other networks also include thousands and tens of thousands of followers. There are numerous such networks around the world that are seeking to reorganize (they would say “restore”) ministerial leadership in the Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions in terms of what they call the “five-fold ministry.” As we reported here on RD: These networks are the implementation of the only form of church governance d…
…prayers was reversed thanks to help from Gov. Rick Perry. Pentecostals in Texas are quite happy with “Prayin’” Rick Perry. Meanwhile, they’re less interested in prayer and more interested in God’s law in Tennessee. The state’s House of Representatives has passed a bill that urges all counties in the state to post the Ten Commandments in their courthouses. A Muslim female weightlifter is waiting to hear from sport officials if she can compete in m…
…al is Ocasio-Cortez’s policy idea; it’s not anything more yet. Fact No. 2: Texas has nothing to do with her policy idea. Fact 3: Wind power accounts for 10 percent of energy production in Texas. Conclusion: West is smearing Ocasio-Cortez even as she’s trying to help. This is clear later when he writes that Ocasio-Cortez’s charity is not charity. What appears to be the Golden Rule is actually something sinister. West wrote: “What Texans found out t…
…etween the anti-abortion restrictions and Islam. Hashtags like #ShariaLawInTexas and #TexasTaliban, as well as political cartoons featuring burqa-clad women in black “pray[ing] for Texas women,” or embraced by fist bumping, bearded men (one in a turban and the other in a cowboy hat) have gone viral. These tags and images show how Islam and Muslims continue to be used in America as short-hand for misogyny, barbarism, and oppression. As a Muslim wom…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…n he wrote “the temptation to understand all this through the lens of partisan politics is almost irresistible.” Indeed, he succumbs, dividing the world between good liberals and “tacky” conservatives, the distinguished and the sophomoric. When confronted by evidence that these categories are not so hard and fast as his inner social scientist would like, he falls back on a rhetoric that constructs a reasonable middle by dismissing all to its left…
…ass. A stranger, upon learning that I don’t have one of the highly-coveted tickets to the Sunday Conference sessions, spontaneously offers me his last extra. Mitt Romney would blend right in amongst the crowds here. But so would Marco Rubio. Or Antonio Villaraigosa. Or any clean-cut man in a white shirt and tie, any woman in Sunday dress with a baby stroller. I try to strike up a conversation with an African woman dressed in a pagne. “Where are yo…
…urch United and its affiliated organization, Alianza de Pastores Unidos de San Diego. A pastor who is among the small number of Anglos at the gathering explains that breaking the news to congregants about the “biblically correct” way to vote can be a delicate business. “They came up in tears and said, ‘I was born in this political party and I’ve always voted in this political party. But now I understand I have to vote on issues.’ Or: ‘My husband h…
It’s not every day that a Baptist pastor based in Texas urges his congregants to be kinder and gentler when thinking or arguing about religious liberty. But that’s exactly what Mark Wingfield, an associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, did in his Monday column for the Dallas Morning News. Despite the conservative and legal hand-wringing, it’s not actually hard to tell the difference between “religious persecution and selfishness,”…
…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…
