Religion Dispatches
…raeli conflict has also become pivotal to Christian fundamentalists in the United States. The Christian Right believes that unless the Jews are in their land, fulfilling the ancient prophecies, Christ cannot return in glory in the Second Coming. So they are passionate Zionists. But this ideology is also anti-Semitic, because in the Last Days they believe that the Antichrist will massacre the Jews in the Holy Land if they do not accept baptism. Do…
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…t to America. It would be easy to make fun of the idea that God tucked the United States away for untold eons until the time was right to fill the Founding Fathers with the Holy Spirit to guide them through the process of writing our nation’s guiding documents. And surely many will make fun of it. It seems outlandish, to put it mildly. But in the words of the Mormon legal scholar Dallin H. Oaks, Perhaps the most important of the great fundamentals…
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…it is wrong to do so. Someone who is aiming for the highest office in the United States, as Santorum is, should be held to a high moral standard, as the strong historical and current socioeconomic ties between The Netherlands and the United States should be held in high standing. All this leads me to the following conclusion: a man who uses such blatant false claims in order to promote his own agenda is either very devious or shockingly ignorant….
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…ion, and economic turmoil in their home countries. They have come in large numbers, many of them undocumented, settling among poor South Africans who often resent their presence. While the situation confronting immigrants and poor natives in the United States is not as dire, there are clear signs of simmering tensions around the issue of undocumented immigration, particularly in poor rural communities and around towns that witnessed factory shutdo…
Read More…and control of territory,” and that “Abrahamic ideologies are always about numbers.” Fears about the growth of Christianity and claims like these have been used successfully to restrict religious freedom in India. Since the 1950s, seven Indian states have passed “Freedom of Religion” laws that ban conversion by “force, fraud, and allurement,” and in some cases require that potential converts register with local officials beforehand. While most rel…
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…d by Hindu nationalists who admire him in India. The RHC and its “Humanity United Against Terror Charity Event” represent the Hindu nationalist mindset as a full-blown, transnational political project that paints a diverse religious tradition as a unified religious and political voice, openly reducing non-Hindus, and especially Muslims, to the status of second-class citizens at best—and, more commonly, to members of a terrorist religion. Trump’s s…
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…hat most Americans would prefer to live in a friendlier, more humane, more united country; I certainly would. But there can be no cheap or easy unity in a country torn apart by an increasingly fascist Right. Troublingly, establishment Democrats like Biden seem unwilling to hear that comity with unreconstructed bigots will only legitimize and empower them in their authoritarian lust for power, causing severe harm to—to use a biblical turn of phrase…
Read More…s’s eventual return. There are approximately one million Adventists in the United States, and 18 million worldwide. Observing the Sabbath on Saturday, not Sunday, and a commitment to health and wellness, including vegetarianism, are prominent features that distinguish Adventism from other Christian denominations. Protecting the Saturday Sabbath observance has driven Adventist involvement in legal challenges under the Free Exercise Clause, such as…
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…effective judicial sanction to a Republican coup d’etat; however, Citizens United is not merely court-sanctioned, but court-engineered, amounting to a judicial coup d’etat executed in behalf of the already-ascendant money power in our society. Noting that this ruling will likely benefit Republicans much more than Democrats is really beside the point; the point—the well-sharpened and deadly point—is that Citizens United will vastly strengthen the h…
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…less categorically that if you can see Governor Palin as President of the United States, you are an ass. On “Spreading the Wealth” To my opponent’s repeated contention that this represents the core of my economic program, I have but three words to say: Guilty as charged. Guilty as charged—and worthy to be sent to the same circle of hell in which John the Baptist cries without ceasing, “Let him who has two coats give to him who has none.” On the D…
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