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State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism

By Ira Chernus

…the House chamber were any judge, the heart of the matter is that, in the best Niebuhrian “realist” fashion, a “contentious and frustrating and messy democracy” is proving its superiority to every other nation with its domestic “civility,” while at the same time sending its military forces to fend off a shadowy and (let’s be honest now) apparently rather ineffectual foreign threat. Whether the president truly believes his Niebuhrian rhetoric no…

The Most Important Religious Category of the Primaries, the Non-Religious, Doesn’t Break Down as Cleanly as You Think

By Daniel Schultz

…dn’t keep up that of older voters. Appropriately enough, Teen Vogue put it best: As expected, Sanders won big with the young voters who did show up, but the youth vote continues to be outnumbered by older voter turnout across the country. Even that might be somewhat generous. As USA Today notes, Sanders won a smaller share of the under-thirty demographic than he did in 2016 in several states. It’s worth noting this shift in a religion-and-politics…

New Book on Trump and Evangelicals Gets it Mostly Right

By Greg Carey

…tories within evangelicalism. Fea repeatedly notes evangelicals’ mixed (at best) history with respect to race relations. He devotes nine pages to the history of racial fear in the evangelical South, but he never gets messy with the most telling factor: that no other religious group even remotely approaches white evangelicals’ preference for Trump. Race proved one of the most decisive predictors of Trump support, and white evangelicals were the mos…

It’s the Water! And Other Lowlights from Presidential Science Debate

By Michael Schulson

…change,’” the Trump campaign wrote. Then things got weirder. “Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water,” Trump continued, talking about something that has little to do with climate change. “Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria. Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep…

The Roots of the American Right’s Muslim Brotherhood Panic

By Sarah Posner

…d all that: The Muslim Brotherhood, widely acknowledged as the largest and best organized opposition force in the country, abstained from the January 25 demonstrations, but belatedly endorsed the January 28 demonstrations. Perhaps as a result of this waffling there has been almost no Islamic content to the demonstrations. The tone has mostly been nationalist and secular. But that reality gets in the way of some good propaganda for the American rig…

Wiccan Prayer in Iowa House Highlights Religious Freedom Problem

By Joseph Laycock

…tes, “We need to understand religious people as they are—not just at their best but also their worst. We need to look at not only their awe-inspiring architecture and gentle mystics but also their bigots and suicide bombers.” This is where pluralism gets tough. For Taylor and like-minded Christians, opposition to Maynard’s religion, and a refusal to engage with it on its own terms, is a religious commitment. Taylor explained: I prayed about this a…

My Childhood Hobby Was Satanic, Or So They Told Me

By Joseph Laycock

…re beset at every turn by demonic forces and evil conspiracies. Despite my best intentions, some people may find these ideas offensive and feel that either their religion or their hobby has been slighted. But I think most readers will find this book interesting and thought provoking. What alternative title would you give the book? For a while my working title was “What The Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Religion and Other Imagined…

At the UN, Conservative Christian Agenda Cloaked in Human Rights Language

By Austin Dacey

…t goals, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. The group’s website declared victory with the adoption of a resolution on the protection of the family at the 26th session of the Human Rights Council. During the debate, a representative of the Caucus sparred with a representative of Amnesty International over the inclusion of ‘various forms of the family’ in the language. The amendment was defeated by a “no action” procedural rule late…

Muslim Brotherhood: Protect Churches; Mufti Exempts Egyptians from Friday Prayer

By H.A. Hellyer

…reports that at least on Thursday night, the protestors were fairly few in number in comparison to before. No one really knows what will happen tomorrow. There is all sorts of speculation going on at the moment—to the point where people are suggesting that actually, the army might attempt a coup. Where they have evidence for this is anyone’s best guess—but it reveals the amount of confusion the people have about the situation. And it’s only increa…

Eyes on the Prize, Rainbow People! A Post-DOMA Challenge

By Peter Laarman

…not a day to say, as one lesbian interviewed on NPR said, “they saved the best for last.” In fairness, the person interviewed was telling an otherwise compelling story about the need for queer people to make common cause with low-wage workers. She and her spouse are small-time farmers in the Central Valley: in that context they can feel how wrong it would be for them to say “thank you very much” to the Supremes and then proceed to ignore the econ…