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American Infidel: Robert Ingersoll Was the “Great Agnostic” of the (Last) Gilded Age

By Peter Laarman

…and music, was devoted to his wife and daughters, and gave his money away freely. Jacoby makes a convincing case that Ingersoll belongs to the egalitarian and humanistic thread of American secularism rather than Social Darwinist thread. And, in fact, Ingersoll stoutly rejected the contempt for the “lower orders” (immigrants, people of color) that was being shown in the 1880s and onward by leading Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham…

The Battle for the Meaning of Religious Freedom Day

By Frederick Clarkson

…a long time. Indeed, what comes up first in a Google search for Religious Freedom Day is ReligiousFreedomDay.com, the work of a California-based Christian right agency called Gateways to Better Education. This group is part of a wider movement that seeks to evangelize children in public schools—as detailed in Katherine Stewart’s book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. Gateways states that they work w…

Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

By Sarah Posner

…inciple. As I wrote at the time, Romney had a conundrum: needing to defend free exercise of religion (an in particular, his religion), but realizing that the Republican base demands the “Judeo-Christian” answer. Given that many conservative evangelicals don’t even think Romney’s religion is part of Christianity, when he gave the “Judeo-Christian” answer last night I cringed—because he didn’t balance it with a free exercise answer. In other words,…

Why So Many American Christians Don’t Understand Protest

By Leah Pannell

…s that these protests—against black death, for black life, for justice and freedom for all people—were disrespectful, disruptive. They shouldn’t inconvenience others by blocking interstates, interrupting games. Yet in Luke 4, Jesus stood in the synagogue, echoed the words of the prophet Isaiah that the oppressed shall be free, and proceeded to be disruptive. In response to the media attention Kaepernick’s actions garnered, Franklin Graham stood be…

Is the Metaverse the Hero We Need to Rescue Us From Suffering and Enchant the World?

By Robert M. Geraci

…ier linger only in the dreams of users. Information supposedly wants to be free; but instead of being free to the users, it’s information about the users that’s given freely unto corporate and political rulers. Is it any wonder that Hollywood is far more likely to envision advanced VR in dystopian rather than utopian terms? But our commitment to the cause reflects the very human experience of trying to enchant the world and make it meaningful. Vir…

Evangelical PR Blitz Before Midterms Won’t Fix the ‘81% Problem’

By Chrissy Stroop

…age of conservative evangelicals rather than what all too often amounts to free PR, journalists will need to ask such questions, to focus on the ways that evangelicals make themselves “all things to all people,” addressing the general public very differently from the ways they address their own; and journalists will need to include the perspectives of critical researchers and exvangelicals alongside the voices of evangelicals in the articles they…

Constitutional Attorney Changes into Drag During Talk on Cancelation of West Texas A&M Drag Show

By Chrissy Stroop

…nts are correct about what the law and Constitution require—their right to free expression was violated—and that Wendler and Kacsmaryk are wrong. After providing an overview and history of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in US constitutional law, Seidel moved on to discuss the Christian Right’s abuse of these key concepts. He noted how the weaponization of “religious freedom” as a bludgeon for Christian supremacy, in tan…

Student Expelled from Sorority for Transphobia Illustrates the Problem with Evangelical Understanding of Pluralism

By Chrissy Stroop

…oul of their ideology. When the logical endpoint of your understanding of “freedom of religion” is state-sanctioned violence against othered people, I contend that you’re doing freedom of religion wrong. This will bring us back to the prominent theologian I mentioned at the beginning of this article. (You didn’t think I was going to forget about him, did you?) Presbyterian Church of America minster, author, and apologist Tim Keller—he of “sex outs…

First Gay Bishop? Give Me a Break

By Peter Montgomery

Love Free or Die—a documentary about Gene Robinson, whose ordination as an openly gay, partnered bishop, triggered responses still reverberating within the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion—won the Special Jury Award for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I got to see the film at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, at which both the bishop and the film’s director, Macky Alston, were present. Th…

A Pence Presidency Would Give Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Vision a Run for its Money

By Diane Winston

…s a baby boomer. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, the media depicted boomers as free-love hippies and anti-establishment rebels, but those eye-catching stereotypes failed to capture the generation’s true ambition. Many yearned for authenticity. They craved experience. They longed to know God and, just as important, for God to know them. Some boomers joined cults. Others went to communes. Still others tuned in, turned on and dropped out. But many stayed…