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Gingrich, Historian, Religionist, Fails Own MLK Weekend Test

By Sarah Posner

…story about a 16 year-old he met in New Hampshire who had started a donut business at age 11. He offered wonkolicious “solutions,” completely divorced from the situations and questions being presented to him. The headline for the Politico story on the campaign stop was “Newt Gingrich battles with crowd at black church.” That, of course, misses the point. Here was Gingrich, who in any other church setting would blather on about God and Jesus and w…

Which One Has the Religion Problem, Gingrich or Romney?

By Sarah Posner

…Carolinians. “I’d like to believe that’s not the issue,” Huckabee told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto. “Four years ago, I was accused of making it an issue. It wasn’t for me then, it isn’t for me now. I would no more not vote for someone because they were Mormon than I would vote for somebody like Al Gore because he’s a Baptist, for heaven’s sake. I think that’s a ridiculous reason to vote or not vote for someone, unless they’ve done something that…

Ground Zero is Sacred Space, But Not Just Because of 9/11

By Randall Balmer

…a school for Africans in New York City. Roman Catholics arrived in greater numbers in the nineteenth century, from places like Ireland, Germany, and Italy. As with other groups, finding their place in the rich tapestry of American diversity did not always come easy. John Hughes, who became the first archbishop of New York (and the founder of what is now Fordham University), protested the use of the Protestant-inflected King James Version of the Bi…

Paranoia and the Progressive Press: A Response to WaPo’s Religion Columnist

By Peter Montgomery

…ure over which the right kind of Christians are meant to have dominion are business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family, and religion. (Some folks rearrange the categories a bit to explicitly include the military.) The language has been used by Pentecostal leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a group that sees itself creating a new church and an army of spiritual warriors who will hasten the return of Christ by t…

How Anne Frank Turned Up At Occupy

By Peter Manseau

…hile Auslander played it unabashedly for yucks, for Englander it’s serious business—because, really, what if? For Auslander, Englander, and Roth, what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank is mainly a question of Jewish identity. Yet Jeff Mangum’s performance, and the chorus that greeted him when he asked the occupiers to sing along his ode to “the only girl I ever loved,” suggests that Anne Frank has also come to mean something else. Transl…

Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail

By Peter Laarman

…mic policy or torture or immigration or health care. Yes, the storytelling business is messy and diffuse. It doesn’t lend itself to sound bites as readily as the “I’m right/you’re wrong” confrontational throwdown does. But religious progressives in particular might well benefit from going this route, because so many of us have journeyed farther and over rockier ground than have our conservative counterparts. Storytelling is already powerful when…

American Indians Irate over Bin Laden Code Name “Geronimo”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…on American Indians and racist stereotypes, and one of the first items of business was a discussion of why this particular code name was chosen. Geronimo was the name given by Mexicans to Goyalthlay, a Chiricahua Apache religious leader (1829–1909), while Americans who lived in the Arizona territory used his name to invoke “terror” in the hearts of white settlers to justify military actions against Indians—including the Apache. Goyalthlay’s earl…

Why is Huntsman’s Mormonism “Tough to Define”?

By Joanna Brooks

…as evidence of the LDS Church’s evolution from mid-20th century models of “business Mormonism” to a more cosmopolitan 21st century outlook. (Both Romney and Huntsman are baby boomers. Generational? I’m not so sure.) But Time’s profile of Huntsman (also published Thursday morning) made it seem that there might be more profound differences at work in the Romney-Huntsman divide. Time’s Melinda Henneberger wrote: And as for whether or not Huntsman sti…

Birtherism, Satire, “Natural Born Citizen,” and Deuteronomy

By Sarah Posner

…ook. Corsi doesn’t cite Titus, but Titus has been pushing this harebrained business for a few years. He first presented it to an IOTC “First Friday” event last year. In a 2009 story on WND, Titus was interviewed as an expert on the original meaning of the Constitution, where he also made the same arguments. In its announcement of the book release today, WND notes that before the release, “conscientious Americans” had “two choices:” believe that Ob…

No-News News From Focus on the Family

By Daniel Schultz

…havior of the church (and through it the larger society). That’s as much a business decision as it is a political calculation. Daly himself says that 90% of his budget is directed “marriage and family issues.” That, combined with a long-term shift in conservative Christian circles from a few highly partisan leaders to a broader leadership, means that Daly is going to find it increasingly easier to raise funds for his adoption initiative than for g…