Religion Dispatches
…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…
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…atirizing The View, and was feted by fellow panelist Star Parker for having 19 children because, as Parker proclaimed, “We win if we just keep having children, ’cause we’re going to outnumber them!”—a staple argument of the Quiverfull movement. Weeks earlier, Santorum had transformed this rhetoric into policy proposal at a South Carolina Fuddruckers appearance with the Duggars, where he argued that low birth rates and a declining American populati…
Read More…of the largest domestically-focused Jewish progressive organization in the country, created out of the merger of Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice, the latter of which had already swallowed up a number of smaller Jewish social justice organizations. I know several people who work at BtA, and I commend them on their ability to keep a secret. I and friends of mine plied several of these folks with drinks, but their lips staye…
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…tices in American life. The debates over this practice emerged in the early 1970s, a time when ineffective and dangerous psychiatric interventions into homosexuality were standard mental health practice and harmed many gay people. Having homosexuality declassified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association and other mental health groups was a major victory for GLBT activists, making it possible for the first time to even imagine t…
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…ssor 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 “state-sanctione…
Read More…. Still, my friend observed, most of the people she attends church with on Sundays simply believe being gay is an abomination. Change is very, very slow to come among LDS Church membership. More Mormons have rallied around Elder Packer’s hurtful speech than have carefully read the prepared official PR statement affirming LGBT humanity and dignity. Few have absorbed the nuances Church leaders have been hammering out in successive statements about L…
Read More…e in God without any doubt,” adding that, “Atheism is barely growing,” with 1% in 1962 and 3% in 2012 indicating no belief in God. The report raises important questions about the relationship between religious affiliation, religious identity, and religiosity in general in the United States that may be addressed in future work by Hout and Fischer on generational and political factors in affiliation, perhaps more particularly, and by Chaves on “the…
Read More…ent, Sapp claims the following: Compared to ’06, Democrats nationally saw a 14 point drop in White Protestant support, 14 point drop with White evangelicals, and a whopping 20 point decline with Catholics. But there are two major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democr…
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…We should remain … in intimate connection with the whole of Europe.” And in 1937, David Ben-Gurion, who would become the first prime minister of Israel, said: “We came to this country with the consciousness that… we had also a great civilizing task to achieve here and that we could be of great help to our Arab neighbors. … The greater our colonization work … the more will be recognized by our neighbors abroad and … with the blessing of European cu…
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…heologian: If you care more about maintaining the image and safety of your Sunday morning 11:00 service, than you do about the reality that Charlottesville, and several years ago, Baltimore, Ferguson, and how these cities turn into a war zone? Then you’re actually just preaching a theology of white supremacy. You’re preaching a logic of dominance. And emboldening the neo-Nazis who are surrounding the church, who believe that they, too, are Christi…
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