Religion Dispatches
…ted. Only 149 groups existed before Obama was elected in 2008. In 2012 the number had expanded to 1,360. Not all are plotting terrorist attacks, of course. But some are. In September 2012, Daryl Johnson, a terrorist analyst for the US Department of Homeland Security testified before a Senate committee that there was an “upsurge” of potentially violent non-Islamic extremist activity in the United States. So fingers point toward right-wing Christian…
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…dance in the general population has produced a significant increase in the number of WEINOs, White evangelicals who seldom or never attend church; and Support for Trump is strongest among White evangelicals who are not connected to churches. Let’s take each of these in turn. Myth 1: A Large and Growing Number of White Evangelical Protestants Do Not Attend Church The general assertion that church attendance has significantly declined among White ev…
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…e-providers like bakeries and florists, dress-shops, hair salons, and “any number” of other businesses could claim that their services are in fact a form of constitutionally protected artistic practice. “The claim at issue here sounds as if the business can put up a sign in its window that says, ‘We sell cakes for heterosexuals only,’” Melling explained, taking ADF’s logic to its natural conclusion. “There’s an immediate consequence of that, and t…
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…hile significant from the perspective of recent trends, however, even that number must be put into perspective. When discussing “Catholics” for the purposes of politics it’s important to remember E.J. Dionne’s famous maxim that “there is no Catholic vote, but the Catholic vote matters.” That’s because the white Catholic vote tends to mirror the demographics of voters in key Northeastern swing states like Pennsylvania. And this explains some of the…
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…this time—after all of the atrocious and dangerous behavior—a significant number would turn away and vote for a return to conventional presidential leadership. Where are these defectors? As I write this, election boards around the country have already counted the votes of over 67 million people who want more death, more deception, and more openly racist and exclusionary public policies. And a huge number of these voters identify as Christian. And…
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…Other organizations raising similar objections include Concerned Women for American, Americans United for Life, and the American Center for Law and Justice. As to private employers, the proposed rule takes note of the fact that private employers are not entitled to religious exemptions under other federal laws, such as Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment. Based on that precedent, the administration declined to extend an exemption t…
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…tholic Christianity as a factor in his conversion, but he also points to a number of other courses that he took at King’s that led him to the point of conversion. He says of the college’s curriculum that it is “not a ‘great books curriculum’ but it draws heavily on the liberal arts tradition.” He adds, “You can’t study the liberal arts without confronting the rich history of Catholicism.” Indeed The King’s College is a microcosm of the larger comm…
Read More…at published the opinions of these cultural anthropologists. There are any number of errors regarding what has been documented as a decline in pregnancies/child births among women in the Muslim world that can be read here. Notwithstanding the fact that both Germany and France’s constitutions and letters of Parliament prohibit a political insurrection that would establish an “Islamic state”. Yes, immigration, specifically Muslim immigration, in Eur…
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…residential candidates remain prominent and the movement has increased its numbers in the Congress and in state governments and functions as a major and sometimes the dominant faction in the Republican Party in many states. The Christian Right remains one of the most powerful movements in American history. I should add that the implications of these things are broader than may meet the eye. Donald Trump’s calls for restricting Muslims from traveli…
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…t and change. Many of these developments, furthermore, continue to shape a number of the assumptions American Christians have about the nature of marriage. Consider the following examples of historical changes in Christian marriage and whether we can honestly still call today’s version “traditional.” 1) Were individuals always required to be conventionally alive? For the majority of the past two thousand years, Christian women could marry Jesus, w…
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