Religion Dispatches
…reported yesterday. Writing on the Fox News website, Robert Jeffress, the Texas megachurch pastor who in 2011 called Mormonism a “cult,” maintains, “No Evangelical I know is expecting Trump to lead our nation in a spiritual revival.” But, he goes on, President Barack Obama has “drastically lowered the threshold of spiritual expectations Evangelicals have of their president. No longer do they require their president to be one of them. Evangelicals…
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…l television this month. After talking with immigrant families in McAllen, Texas on the ABC 20/20 special episode “Pope Francis and the People,” Pope Francis asked to speak with a Catholic sister he saw “hidden there among all the people” in the pews—Sister Norma Pimentel (start at 1:48 for that moment). He thanked Pimentel—and all women religious in the United States—for the work they do, then said, “I’ll tell you one other thing. Is it appropria…
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…Rev. Edward Graff, was moved to several churches until he was arrested in Texas and died in custody. So when Archbishop Chaput callously says that we should all “get over” wanting to go back and blame, read that statement in the context of current lobbying by the Catholic Church not to extend the statute of limitations. The Archbishop isn’t new to this fight, having contested statute of limitations laws as Bishop of Denver. He knows exactly what…
Read More…of color. Twenty members are from Southern and Border states (I’m counting Texas and Oklahoma in this group). Most of the others are from Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Idaho, with a remaining smattering of members from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and New Jersey. They of course would deny that there is any racial agenda, but it is the state legislative counterparts of these very same folks who have worked overtime to restrict v…
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…hnic, and religious agendas is especially timely today as conservatives in Texas have pressured textbook companies into producing materials that present America’s origin as an explicitly “Christian nation,” while whitewashing the treatment of Native Americans and enslaved Africans. Critical historiography is needed to counter these renewed myths of innocent domination. But Krueger’s work also does something equally important: By tracing the evolut…
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…ons: Giving Honor to Whom Honor is Due”— which brought together the elder and younger Sprouls and Phillips clan. It was moving “to see the bond between them,” he said, explaining how very much alike the two men were. Texas Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX), recently known for his recent campaign bumper sticker “if babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted,” tweeted Friday asking for prayers for Phillips and his family….
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…ssell’s 1996 novel The Sparrow recounts the horrific journey of Fr. Emilio Sandoz in the year 2019 to the planet Rakhat, and the United Nations inquest which follows his return in 2059. As Sandoz tragically discovers his mission is based on a very human and very flawed misinterpretation of the extraterrestrial culture. Dutch novelist Michael Faber takes a similar subject in his 2014 work The Book of Strange New Things which follows a British missi…
Read More…d, so, the idea that that is protected under the First Amendment is wrong. Santorum went on nonetheless to insist to moderator Wolf Blitzer that he believes in First Amendment protections for Muslims, “but what Donald Trump was saying was nothing against Muslims. His comment was against this administration who doesn’t have a policy to properly vet people coming into this country.” The rest of the field must have gotten the memo, because the “it’s-…
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…across the country to defeat the ERA. Beverly LaHaye gave speeches to thousands. Texas public school watchdog Norma Gabler became a fixture at the annual textbook adoption hearings in Austin, claiming moral authority as a mother to revise curricula according to conservative beliefs. Stories of these and other women fill the book, suggesting that family values made the personal political for conservative women. They understood feminism as a misrep…
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…Roe. Scalia was less nuanced about homosexuality. In the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down criminal sodomy and paved the way for legalization of same-sex marriage, he complained that the opinion was “the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionall…
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