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Will Anti-Gay Churches Have Their Tax Exempt Status Revoked?

…ne, and activity. And, despite the vociferous objections to comparisons of today’s anti-gay efforts to segregation, it was, in fact, a fear that the IRS would crack down on racially segregated schools that mobilized the religious right in the 1970s. According to historian Randall Balmer in his book, Thy Kingdom Come, religious right leaders were far more concerned about the IRS’s revocation of the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University over its…

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When the ‘Biblical View’ for Evangelicals Was That Life Begins at Birth

…symposium participants clarified in an accompanying issue of Christianity Today: “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: ‘If a man kills any human life he will be put to death’ (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.” A 1967 issue of the…

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Christian Nationalism Was the Loser of Tuesday’s Debate

…st night’s otherwise circus-like debate. I’ll come back to what I do mean. Today’s authoritarian GOP is the party of white Christians and those who are willing to support an extreme Christian nationalist agenda. Today’s Democratic Party has thus become the party of literally everyone else who chooses to affiliate with one of the major parties in our broken two-party system. This situation makes for a messy coalition, but it also provides Democrats…

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The Immorality of Immortality

…boredom? I wonder. Needless to say, to the extent that longevity research promotes ways to alleviate the suffering caused by debilitating diseases such as Altzheimer and Parkinson, they are all very beneficial. However, I also believe that all programs about extension of human life cannot be divorced from the deeper reflection about the purpose of human life. Such reflection seems to be missing from the transhumanist literature. One could object…

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The Elite Movement Laying the Foundation for a MAGA That Will Outlast Trump and Remake America: Inside NatCon Part I

…anti-modern flourish, to the rote and tired moral panic that characterizes today’s conservative movement. Each speaker races to outdo the next in offering the most bleak and doom-laden prognosis of the fallen era. “2020,” announces movement founder Yoram Hazony in hushed tones to begin Monday morning’s plenary, “was a watershed year in the history of the United States [and] in the history of the democratic world…a change in [the] political paradig…

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The New God-Fearers (FKA “The Nones”) and Where to Find Them

…aware there are two distinct constituencies within the range of his voice. Today we’d call them churchgoers and Nones. But should we? “Nones” is a slippery, amorphous term, a null set. Maybe we’d do better to dust off the old God-fearer moniker, and apply it to those who are still coloring outside the religious lines as Lydia once did. American Christianity—especially its mainline Protestant variety—has largely forgotten how to seek out and visit…

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White Nationalist Ideology Shines Through at Elite MAGA Conference: Inside NatCon Part II

…similation is never complete with any group, it certainly will not be with today’s immigrants either. They will change the culture, for better or for worse, just as their predecessors have—but I would say, they will change it likely to a greater degree because the initial gap is wider.” If people from different parts of the European continent “remain different all the way up until today,” he reasons, “what about people from different continents?”…

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Does Religion Justify the Murder of Troy Davis? [Updated]

…eligious traditions. There are bloody, vindictive religious traditions (as today’s not-so-new atheists insist on reminding us), and there are those which soften the human tendency toward vengeance and violence. Religion does not have the answer, because it has all the answers, the right and the wrong. Religion is less a glossary of terms (justice means this, righteousness that) than a grammar, a framework for moral reasoning. It is a language in w…

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Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

…abor movement is solidly progressive. It has been the biggest single force promoting universal, government-supported health care coverage, protecting Social Security from Wall Street privatizers, and advancing a green jobs/green energy future. But that’s not all. The racist, jingoist, homophobic, misogynistic movement of American labor’s worst years—the George Meany/Lane Kirkland years—is long dead and buried. Today’s labor leadership is solidly a…

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Religion as a Front for Tyranny: A Roundtable on the Timeliness of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

…he Handmaid’s Tale is portrayed as more extreme than what we see around us today. Atwood was a scholar of the Puritans, and there are echoes of Puritanism in the visuals (those outfits, public punishments, forced prayer), and in the plot devices. And yet again: there are constitutional issues at hand in our present-day reality. Sure, freedom of religion is increasingly being used as a weapon by conservatives, but who’s really threatened by that? M…

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