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“Project Blitz” Seeks to Do for Christian Nationalism What ALEC Does for Big Business

By Frederick Clarkson

…nment should be neutral in matters of religion and certainly should not be using public schools to tell young people that there is one God and they must trust that God.” “The message isn’t subtle” she observes, “and it suggests that if you don’t agree, you aren’t welcome and you even may be un-American. That’s a lot of pressure when you’re in elementary school.” Measures in Category 2 are framed as “Resolutions and Proclamations Recognizing th…

How Men’s Rights Activists Are Finding Unlikely Allies in New Atheism: #MeToo, the Manosphere, and the “Church of Feminism”

By Caroline Matas

…fed up with the #MeToo movement. What is, perhaps, more surprising is the number of New Atheist figureheads in which Men’s Rights Activists are finding unlikely allies. Openly misogynistic online communities—collectively called the “Manosphere”—are bound together by one foundational belief: that feminism is a society-wide delusion that oppresses men at every opportunity. So-called “Red Pill” culture draws its name from the blue pill/red pill conc…

New Survey: Catholic Women “Disengaged & Disengaging” — And Don’t Listen to US Bishops

By Patricia Miller

…re progressive-leaning women have left the church—one-quarter (26%) report using natural family planning as a method of contraception, which is the second-highest rate following women born before the availability of modern contraceptives. Politically, the women who responded to the survey trended Democratic. Some 60% were either Democratic (41%) or leaned Democratic (18%), while just under one-quarter (24%) were Republican and 14% leaned Republica…

Reports of the Death of ISIS Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…shambles, and those trying to go elsewhere are herded into massive camps housing tens of thousands of refugees set up by the UN High Commission for Refugees in neighboring Kurdistan. I visited some of these camps in recent months and talked with a group of young men who were hanging out in front of their tents smoking cigarettes in an act of defiance against the ISIS regime that would jail anyone caught smoking. They told me that they were relieve…

Religious Freedom Historian John Ragosta on “Religious Freedom”

By Frederick Clarkson

…n of religion), but government can say that if you want to run a business (using public streets, public utilities, police and fire protection, etc.), you cannot discriminate against customers based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. Of course, if people don’t like particular laws, they can be changed, but Jefferson was very clear that you can’t use religion or religious freedom to claim an exemption from an otherwise valid law. How do we simu…

The Anti-Gay Highway

By Kathryn Joyce

…gger and stronger than in America. So the conservatives are relying on the numbers of African leaders; they start fighting mainline church leadership using Africans to win the American battle, and come across as though they care about Africa. Do these renewal church conservatives in America actually care about Africa? They have some explaining to do: here conservatives came to fame because one of the governments, in a broadcast program, accused ma…

Defending the Helpless: New Bible Highlights Poverty and Justice

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ld support such a thing. With right-wing politicians and religious outfits using Jesus as everything from a wealth building partner, to a business CEO to a partner in denying equality in all areas of life to other human beings, is it really any surprise that most people don’t know that the in the Bible God has a definite preference for the poor and outcast? Jesus’ message of helping the least of these has been so co-opted by the religious right an…

When the Church’s LGBTIQ Loss is the World’s Gain

By Mary E. Hunt

…ll families.” Recognizing the intersectionality of all justice issues, and using the wisdom gleaned from the sex/gender struggles, the group seeks “1) To open up spaces for faith communities to hear the stories of those who have been silenced or excluded, and 2) To lead communities of faith and spiritual practice into reconciliation conversations and actions.” The Spahr Project is a model for other groups, especially ones that have been predominan…

U.S. Bishops’ Silence on Guns and Gays

By Patricia Miller

…tion of same-sex marriage was some kind of cultural Armageddon and that refusing to accommodate gay people is a protected form of religious martyrdom. Only Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, had the guts to admit that the Catholic Church was complicit in fostering a culture of hostility toward the gay community: …sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians…

The New Normaal: “Black Pete,” Muslims and Whiteness in the Netherlands

By Suzanne van Geuns

…buse the freedoms and tolerance they came here for.’ Also not normaal: ‘accusing normaal Dutch people of racism.’ And whoever can’t be normaal, he states outright, had better leave. The civic secularist ideal of ‘normaal’ is predicated on a remembering of traditions of tolerance, and – the irony is painful here – of being ‘ahead’ of the rest of the world, especially the United States, in matters of social justice. The ideal of normaal is sustained…