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After the Trump Tapes: Evangelical Authoritarianism Revisited

By Chrissy Stroop

…lt, pundits are scratching their heads again. PRRI data gathered since the breaking of the Trump tapes scandal has white evangelical support for Trump holding at 65%, which would seem to indicate that reports that evangelical Trump support is “plummeting,” based on a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, are exaggerated at best. Of course, Christianity Today did publish a scathing takedown of Trump, although it painted Hillary Clinton in an equally negative lig…

New Book Details Harms of Evangelical ‘Purity’ Movement and the Obstacle to Change

By Elizabeth Shively

…ites like No Shame Movement, a website on which people share stories about breaking up with purity culture, and #LifeAfterIKDG, which tracks critiques of the hallmark purity how-to text, I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. Harris himself suggests he’s rethinking his message, and will do so in a film with an anticipated release date in the fall. As Pure demonstrates, the interconnected messages about sexual abstinence before marriage and gend…

How a Powerful ‘Ex-Gay’ Pastor is Chasing the Latino Vote

By Katherine Stewart

…tor who is among the small number of Anglos at the gathering explains that breaking the news to congregants about the “biblically correct” way to vote can be a delicate business. “They came up in tears and said, ‘I was born in this political party and I’ve always voted in this political party. But now I understand I have to vote on issues.’ Or: ‘My husband has always told me who to vote for. But, before God, I can’t vote for a candidate who believ…

Goodbye to Amy Winehouse, Living Celebrity Dead

By Mathew Schmalz

…larify that Amy Winehouse was no Kali. Kali is a Goddess of liberating destruction; of breaking the connections that bind us to the world. Alcohol, considered so polluting within traditional Hinduism, becomes an offering precisely because it suggests transcending the very distinction between pure and impure and other dualisms that prevent us from seeing the unity of all things. While Kali does live at the cremation ground, Amy Winehouse was no Kal…

Why Conservatives are Turning on Beck

By Sarah Posner

…onstruct of government isn’t based on natural law and reason, but the construct is that the Qu’ran is the constitution and the clerics rule through oligarchy and lay Muslims have to abide by the clerical injunction of shari’ah.” Beck has never been shy about showcasing rapture-ready end-timers like Joel Rosenberg or John Hagee; his apocalyptic rantings about Islam of late are tinged with that sort of Ezekiel Gog-Magog prophecy — which, in the view…

The Debt Ceiling Crisis and Biblical Economics

By Julie Ingersoll

…e tea partiers love Paul, the affection within the GOP itself may be short lived, as Aaron Blake at the Washington Post argues. The new GOP coalition, built on tea party support, is breaking down over the debt limit crisis. A couple of months back Republicans (acting like Republicans) were demanding that, in exchange for the debt ceiling increase, there be substantial budget cuts and a strategy to reduce the debt. But now tea partiers like Michel…

Is This Light?

By Amina Wadud

…o risk of corporal punishment. I mean, let’s face it; it is pretty hard in today’s complex world to ascribe the word “wanton” to any one action. But what is happening in the cry for a return to shari’ah (also mistakenly taken as Islamic law, when what people really mean is fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence — since shari’ah is more abstract than law). In Pakistan or Nigeria an overinflated interest in penal codes, or the hudud ordinances, has left women…

Republican Candidates Face Mythical Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…m on the percentage of gay people in the population. After quoting from the famed “Kinsey Report” that 10% of the population is gay, Bachmann and her husband Marcus informed her that “Your facts are wrong,” and that the Kinsey report had been proved to be a “myth.” Whether that’s true or not, what Romney, Perry, and Bachmann are discovering is that gay and lesbian people are not mythical creatures they can bash with impunity to win religious right…

Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail

By Peter Laarman

…nd how desperation and depression are taking their toll for millions who struggle for a livelihood. If there is any passion at all in these recitations, it is a passion in the head. Better than none, I suppose. But if we want to galvanize people who themselves are not struggling around the grim state of the economy, reeling off the facts won’t cut it. People must be invited to engage directly with those who suffer: that is where transformation can…

Things the GOP Won’t Like about Ron Paul

By Julie Ingersoll

…l liberties, and has mostly been ineffective. He is opposed to the war on drugs, argues that drug addiction in general should be treated medically not criminally, and favors legalization of medical marijuana. On the all-important social issues, Republican Party primary voters are not going to be happy with Paul. He opposes “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” arguing that gay or straight behavior in the military that is disruptive is grounds for dismissal, but…