Religion Dispatches
…sten, and especially to those who would not. Like the gays and lesbians of today, Jesus made enemies when he came out. Jesus angered his family, he angered his friends, and most of all he angered those in power when he came out against the greed, the neglect of the poor, the inequality, and the injustice all around him. Like many of the gays and lesbians of today, that coming out cost him his life. Coming out is not for wimps—it really does take a…
Read More…explored in a piece for the Daily Beast in June), particularly his role in promoting homeschooling, Lizza gives short shrift to Rushdoony, who is not only a “prominent Dominionist,” as Lizza describes him, but the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and Titus’ inspiration. And, as Julie Ingersoll has detailed on numerous occasions, “Christian Reconstructionist founder Rousas John Rushudoony is often called the father of the Christian homeschool…
Read More…arah Lipton-Lubet, Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Today’s hearing was a political show-trial bought and paid for by the powerful lobbyists at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops exerting their influence over certain members of Congress. . . . [F]ederal tax dollars should not be used to impose religious values on others.” Issa, who claimed to be conducting the hearing over the $2 million contract because of the necessit…
Read More…– gays and lesbians may have a “civil partnership” but so far, here in the United States at least, they are not treated equally thanks to the federal restrictions of the Defense of Marriage Act. But, even if DOMA were repealed and all the benefits were the same reserving one word for heterosexuals and another word for gays and lesbians continues to make the distinction that one is “better” and one is “less than” the other. If they truly are the sa…
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…ng the two together, I’m always forced to choose. Will I be Asian American today or gay today? In the LGBT community, even where I feel really safe, I rarely hear anything that affirms my cultural background or the racism of notions of beauty in the community. Singularity is the sin that resonates with me—forcing people to choose one thing over another in terms of our identities. Hybridity, like an apple-pear blend, gets to the notion that we can…
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…ho claimed the right to re-name the human beings they believed they owned. Today, white Christian missionaries retain power over representations of African civilizations, often influencing the African and Caribbean sheep among their flocks to condemn ancient African religions and customs. Long after the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean and the United States, Mr. Robertson and others in his camp can’t seem to restrain themselves from trying to…
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…k the capital of Portugal on November 1, 1755, All Saints’ Day. Scientists today speculate that it probably registered as a nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hi…
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…ic legacy, voices such as these cannot be found among the Mormon hierarchy today. After the 2008 crash, the Mormon Conference focused on economic issues, but narrowly, stressing individual thrift and endurance rather than taking on socioeconomic structures or public policy. I had assumed that the silence on the part of today’s Mormon leadership was due to ignorance. It had gotten out of touch. Mormon Leaks has disabused me of that assumption. Elde…
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…th a battle axe” and opined that such militant Christians are again needed today. Contemporary “outlaw archaeologists” continue to draw new narratives from the Rune Stone using such techniques as dowsing rods for divining hidden codes within the runes. Some of these new narratives describe large settlements of Christian Vikings who lived in Minnesota for centuries following Leif Eriksson’s arrival in Vinland. There is a ready market for such wild…
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…central tenets of American culture. But as we have documented here at RD, today’s “religious freedom fighters” are waging a very different battle than did this nation’s Founders when they considered the concept of freedom of religion important enough to be included in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The confusion begins to mount when Gjelten begins to discuss real-world examples. He writes: If a football coach is not allowed to…
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