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Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

…ople who aren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal sch…

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Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

…of the Catholic vote in key swing states. In Wisconsin, it would have taken 18 more Catholics per parish to swing the outcome Clinton’s way, and in Pennsylvania, 34 more Catholics per parish. In the end, maybe it’s helpful (or not) to realize, as Dan Maguire recently wrote, that there’s nothing new in dramatic, disconcerting swings in history: The Exodus story in the Bible (when not misunderstood as history) is a metaphor for human societies. Prop…

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From Licking Floors to Praying for an Inept Government, Churches React to C-19

…ciety, among the most physically intimate, and likely include the greatest number of vulnerable people. Even single members of large congregations can have a dramatic effect on how coronavirus spreads or doesn’t, as South Korea found out the hard way. While many aren’t meeting at all or are streaming services, some churches that do meet feel like they need to support those who need it, in worship or otherwise. My mother’s congregation in Madison,…

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Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

…ndomly, depending on the history of the city. Burkhard Bilger, in a recent New Yorker profile of neuroscientist David Eagleman, describes this transition in our understanding of how the brain keeps time. During the mid-nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that there was a single, integrated time-keeper somewhere in the brain—the equivalent of a neurological stop watch. More recent studies, however, suggest a hodgepodge of overlapping syst…

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Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

…etings claimed that because an alleged act of abuse was committed against a 17-year-old in 1995, the allegation should be thrown out. At the time of the alleged abuse, the canonist argued, canon law held that the age of majority was sixteen. But review boards were not established to serve a canon-law function. Their role is simply to determine whether there is good reason to believe an alleged act of abuse took place against a minor. What if the N…

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The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

…ness. The Confederacy wasn’t dissolved, it was sublimated The Compromise of 1877 brought white, anti-Black militia culture into the fold of the postbellum state. Confederate generals and other violent Southern Democrats agreed to accept Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’ victory in the 1876 election so long as the federal troops were removed from the South. After the federal withdrawal, conservatives quickly marshaled their racist street and electora…

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To Get Through This Time We’ll Have to Shred the ‘Racial Contract’ and Choose Solidarity Over Sacrifice

…eform, law professor Paul Butler states, “the flames that engulfed Watts in 1965, Newark in 1967, Miami in 1980, Los Angeles in 1992, Ferguson in 2015 and Minneapolis in 2020 were in response to police violence against Blacks.” These forms of unrest reveal the persistence of the racial contract as well as challenges to its legitimacy—even in the midst of a pandemic. Black feminist and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism as the…

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Why Don’t White People Show Up For Juneteenth The Way They Showed Up For George Floyd?

…is that White people do not attend Juneteenth festivals in any appreciable numbers. This month I attended two Juneteenth festivals in the Columbia, South Carolina metropolitan area and the results were the same: minimum White attendance. Both events were free to the public, with ideal weather and plenty of good food and entertainment. Whereas a cross-section of Black America was in attendance, Whites stuck out like rice in chocolate pudding. But t…

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The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

…’s Jewishness seems like a weird way to do that. I do, however, like their new video (though I worry about some of its implications): As a strong answer to a question I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip succinctly highlights a century of Jewish social justice concern. It’s compelling viewing. At the same time, both the clip and Bend The Arc’s new website situate this narrative in a Jewis…

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“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

…e same sort of logic offered by another Louisiana rally-goer quoted by the New York Times, 18-year-old Haley Harris, part of the Oklahoma family band that created the unofficial Santorum campaign song, “Game On!”: “If he can run his household, he can run the country,” Harris (whose pastor dad is part of her band) told the crowd. “One of the things that kind of caught our eye with Rick was the size of his family,” yet another supporter told the Was…

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