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Q Shaman’s New Age-Radical Right Blend Hints at the Blurring of Seemingly Disparate Categories

…und base underneath the town where alien experiments were undertaken, that free energy was possible if only the dark cabal hadn’t kept it from us to continue profiting from our labor, and that the banking system and wage labor were designed to keep us enslaved. Spirituality, they told me, was the route to freedom from these third dimensional machinations. The dark cabal wants to block spiritual evolution because it threatens their control. What’s…

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Right Wing Suspicion of Experts is Martin Luther’s Fault

…enry must have. Of course, even if Republicans have taken an otherwise healthy skepticism to a mad extreme, Democrats should take care not to become fanatically loyal to an infallible elite. One hopes, for the sake of American democracy, that we can together strike a wise balance between suspicion and deference with respect to expertise. The greater danger right now is brazen suspicion run amok. Unfortunately, as the history of the Reformation sho…

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No “Cancel Culture” on the Right: How Conservative Christians Protect the Powerful

…tion do much belt tightening. Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no equivalence between criticizing people who hold (or enable) dehumanizing opinions—and even, perhaps, applying consequences for those opinions—and the suffering imposed on those who are dehumanized by those opinions (and whose rights may even be restricted by policies grounded in bigotry). Case in point: the transgender community took particular issue with the Harper’s letter, with tran…

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What’s Missing From Popular Discussions of Today’s Christian Nationalism?

…bly have a positive mindset, and that narrative turns out to be false, at least to the people here on the ground. Speaker after speaker told hopeful stories of personal triumph and presented a vision of an America characterized by what they call “freedom,” opportunity, personal empowerment, and spiritual fulfillment. Party loyalists in Kissimmee passionately conveyed the message that this happy future is within their grasp—they just need to trampl…

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Is the Satanist Behind 10 Commandments Challenge Sincere?

…legal team. Future plans involve legally ordaining ministers and using the free exercise clause to claim privileges for Satanists. Satanic ministers could, for example, illegally marry a gay couple and then, when the state refuses to recognize the marriage, claim that their free exercise rights have been violated. Other projects involve the Satanic ideal that one’s body is sacred and inviolable. Expressing disgust that corporal punishment is still…

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Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors On The March; More in Global LGBT Recap

…rnational, the global arm of the LGBT-equality-opposing Alliance Defending Freedom, recently posted a promotional video portraying themselves as defenders of people being persecuted for their faith. “ADF International has a presence at every major international institution on the planet,” says Executive Director Paul Coleman. In the video, ADF International’s Director of UN Advocacy Elyssa Kor criticizes the United Nations for trying to force coun…

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‘Religious Freedom’: Constitutional Principle or Electoral Politics?

…hat is political, but respectful of the constitutional limits on religious freedom. It has correctly taken the position that public policies established to serve the common good require a clear and narrow definition of what is and what is not a religion. We do not just abandon the common good to unexamined claims that a public health or education provider is required by faith not to comply.  We are prepared to give an actual religion an almost fre…

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Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

…d drunkenness and slothfulness. In 1712 Cotton Mather railed against “the feast of Christ’s nativity… spent in reveling, dicing, carding, masking, and in all licentious liberty…by mad mirth, by long eating, by hard drinking, by lewd gaming, by rude reveling!” In 1659 – a year before Christmas would return to Britain with Charles II – countrymen across the Atlantic in Massachusetts and Connecticut made the celebration of Christmas punishable by a f…

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NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

…hing of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free. The reason I understand the Bible the way I do is probably because I interpret through the pain that I’ve been through. But it’s not me compromising. I know wha…

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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

…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,…

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