Religion Dispatches
…et by submitting the most extreme version of the bill—the one that demotes Arabic as an official language, that deletes “equality” as a goal of the Jewish state, that grants the right of way to “Jewish” aspects of policy and secondary status to democratic principles, that opens the door to deporting non-Jews, in particular African asylum seekers, and to depriving Arabs of rights and privileges, and to neutering the Supreme Court as the last vestig…
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…re: I am an ex-evangelical). Under conditions of Christian hegemony in the United States, however, that has not been the prevailing practice—not by a long shot. If social media buzz is any indicator, there’s still a widespread tendency for liberals to dismiss Christian nationalists as “fake Christians”—a deflection that only serves to reinforce Christian supremacism by equating “Christian” with “good,” thus harming the non-religious and adherents…
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…government. Studies of late twentieth-century legislative decisions in the United States did show—unsurprisingly—that they favored the interests of the wealthy. The studies did not demonstrate, however, that these decisions threatened democracy, just that they went against public opinion on certain issues such as estate taxes and support for a minimum wage. Again: Hunh?? And not a word here about Citizens United or about the rivers of dark money t…
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…undocumented workers) approximately one out of every hundred people in the United States come from this tiny country. As a taxpayer, I am more connected to this country than I thought I was. So, I wanted to go down to El Salvador to learn how this all started. What did you discover upon your arrival? When we went to the forensics lab in El Salvador to learn about the massacres that occurred in the 1980s and early ’90s, we learned about the level o…
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…vent. He has also written extensively about anti-abortion terrorism in the United States. In 1997, Clarkson wrote Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy (Common Courage Press), one of the earliest books about the conservative evangelical movement which has become an integral part of the American political landscape. More recently, Clarkson, along with blogger Bruce Wilson, founded Talk2Action, an interactive blog covering…
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…omise of psychedelic medicines.” While most of the existing centers in the United States take narrower approaches, either choosing to focus on the scientific study of psychedelics or training clinicians and chaplains in psychedelic-assisted therapies, the ECPS promises to take a more holistic approach, combining scientific research with clinical experience and application. As the ECPS’s website puts it, the center seeks to: “leverage an active and…
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…orizes Anthony Comstock, the man who inspired the 1873 Comstock Act in the United States. According to Steven K. Green, this federal law enabled Comstock “to seize objectionable material and prosecute people for transmitting ‘obscene’ items [like birth control] through the US mail.” The law was finally struck down as unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the 1965 decision Griswold v. Connecticut—though people like Rose would like…
Read More…ppease Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan in order for him to go easy on Saudi Arabia after their gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Fortunately, the career diplomats in the State Department didn’t go for it. And the howl of public outcries over the rumors made it clear that there would be legal challenges and a huge public backlash if Trump tried to push it through. On Sunday he relented a…
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…tion was ratified two years later, in 1789. When Duché prayed there was no United States of America, the colonies hadn’t even declared independence. There was no godless Constitution drawing its power from We the People, rather than a deity. The First Amendment to that Constitution wasn’t ratified for two more years (1791). In short, there was no constitutional separation between state and church. But judges and justices, whose sole job is to inte…
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…rump’s object of worship is not the God of Abraham, nor is his duty to the United States. In the dizzying incoherence of his policies and moods, a thin thread of consistency in Trump’s positions endures: land borders themselves are sacred, holy, worth honoring with expansive and menacing shrines to their glory, and worth protecting with the blood of innocents. He doesn’t believe that God put them there, but that the borders themselves are divine e…
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