Religion Dispatches
…g some moments in the spotlight and comparing political fortunes to catching “lightning in a bottle.” His campaign rides on convincing aspirational moderates and younger voters to hitch their wagons to his telegenic, pro-business, civil-union supporting star. Very Disney. Very Orlando. Trouble is that Republican conduct over the last two years provides very little evidence of GOP capacity for nimble redirection or self-redefinition….
Read More…e kind of thing you’d expect your average big-fundraising poll-leading pro-business nice-guy Republican frontrunner to say. But is anyone paying attention? Nope. Because Sarah Palin is out in the parking lot doing doughnuts in her tour bus. Even CNN abandoned covering the announcement a few minutes early. With fantasy candidates and Fox news celebrities turning their heads, Republicans are showing about as much discipline and focus as US Weekly re…
Read More…sproportionately on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.” Now—as his business partner Tim Phillips heads up tea party astroturf group Americans for Prosperity—he’s burrowing for an opening to convince activists that social and economic issues are linked. He recently described an overlap between tea party activists and his organization on the Christian Broadcasting Network. When I wrote that piece in March 2010, Barry Lynn of Americans United…
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…s itself as “a full-service consulting firm helping political, non-profit, business and government entities better understand America’s rich and complex faith landscape and build relationships with people of faith from across the ideological spectrum on the local and national level.” It is boasting on its website of its attendance at the upcoming Netroots Nation conference where principals Burns Strider and Eric Sapp will be on a panel, “Moving Fo…
Read More…iet Coke and petit-fours shaped like Kotex, simply out of spite.) Then the business meeting started, after which we planned to enjoy a light lunch. Anyway, that’s when someone — I forget who — brought a motion to the floor. And it was a thing of beauty in its sheer simplicity, I have to say. I still get chills when I think of it. She said, “Hey, sisters! How about we pretend as though pregnancy can, sometimes, become a fatal condition that causes…
Read More…boldly courageous posture. As a clergywoman whose work has been about the business of civil rights, peace and reconciliation, I cannot sit idly by and have joined my fellow clergy in their commitment. Now, I wonder, with our denomination losing members in large numbers daily, how we will fare as we begin to see the groundswell of clergy facing trial and having their orders defrocked for their commitment to justice? Of course, I know the Church th…
Read More…glacial pace on apologies and skip the next 150 years and get on with the business of apologizing to them now. A petition started by several organizations including the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, Believe OutLoud, Faith in America, GetEQUAL, Soulforce and Truth Wins Out reads in part: “Given the arc of justice and the trajectory of history, there is no doubt the SBC will offer a full-fledged apology to the LGBT community in t…
Read More…ilure of the NPR story to present an accurate picture of the religious and business motives of gay conversion programs, and Warren Throckmorton and Ted Cox have described the marginal, controversial practices of Wyler’s Journey into Manhood program. But to get the full story—the story NPR missed—it’s important to understand Wyler, Journey into Manhood, and gay conversion programs not as a health story but as part of a decades-long religious experi…
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…we the cool heads who bloody well leave each other alone and mind our own business? If you don’t want them taking away your guns or your porn, you’d better not call them out to take away our hijabs. There are voices calling for wisdom: leave the hijabis and the burqa-wearers alone; perhaps, in time, they will raise bare-headed daughters. Perhaps they will get tired of being rabble-rousers (because surely, a woman in a burqini is only trying to th…
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…n Santorum wants to tell her miscarriage story (which she did), that’s her business. But her miscarriage is not there for the world at large to leer at and derive lessons therefrom. “But shall we not even point out the hypocrisy, if it were to turn out to be an elective abortion? I mean, the hypocrisy!” Yeah, look, I mean, I’m asking myself this too. And I guess my answer is: Well, first, I think the original post is clearly wrong on the facts. Bu…
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