Religion Dispatches
Feisal Abdul-Rauf is in the news again for statements on Park51. Again, he is muddying the waters, and setting back the cause he is supposedly working towards. When asked if he would move the project, this past week’s answer was yes, when previously he’d suggested it would upset some people overseas, so he wouldn’t. It highlights the persistent leadership failure of Abdul-Rauf. The Park51 team most recently issued a press release in early Januar…
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Just days after a new Massachusetts law took effect this month ensuring trans people have equal access to spaces of public accommodation, right-wing legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit challenging the law on “religious freedom” grounds. According to the suit, filed on behalf of “four diverse Massachusetts churches,” the new statewide law requiring all places of public accommodation to make facilities available to the…
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In April of 2010, Eddie Glaude wrote “The Black Church is Dead,” an essay that incited conversation and debate about contemporary black Protestantism. [Read RD’s numerous responses, including Glaude’s own response to the responders.] In opposition to entrenched assumptions about the black church, Glaude argued three points: the black church has never been a coherent entity with a unified progressive vision; it is no longer the center of the black…
Read MoreIn an interview yesterday with Breitbart “News” Daily, Dr. Ben Carson told host Stephen Bannon that American Muslims who tried to embrace an American value like democracy while practicing Islam would have to be “schizophrenic.” Because the two, as he Islamsplained, were in no way compatible. I know, I know. I had the same reaction: Ben Carson is still running for President?! I’m not sure if he’s knocking Muslims because it draws headlines and mig…
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In July 2011, Chantal Lavigne of Quebec died as a result of a personal development seminar. Last week, a coroner’s report confirmed that Lavigne was accidentally “cooked to death” during a class called “Dying in Consciousness.” Participants were wrapped in mud and plastic, covered with blankets, and left immobilized for about nine hours. Cardboard boxes were placed over their heads and they were encouraged to hyperventilate. Lavigne died of hyper…
Read MoreIt’s common knowledge that the religious right played a large role in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. About 4 out of 5 white evangelicals voted for Trump and the majority continue to back him, even if explicit support may be slipping. Evangelical support for Trump has, of course, not gone without its critics, among which include fellow evangelicals themselves. Some have even suggested that we’re on the cusp of an alternative religious movem…
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Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black minister Dwight McKissic removed his 1,600 member congregation from the Texas state convention over the organization’s outspoken repudiation of critical race theory. But…
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…than a historical summation, described by Rakove thusly: “Disestablishment promoted free exercise, and free exercise made establishment superfluous.” Beyond Belief recounts this history, and, while Rakove touches on the present, his focus is the past. But it’s impossible to read Beyond Belief and not notice that, in their desperation to “make America great again” Trump, Pence, and the other Christian nationalist politicians and judges have turned…
Read MoreA new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that Americans continue to view the GOP as friendlier toward religion than the Democratic Party. Forty-eight percent of persons polled regard Republicans as friendly versus twenty-nine percent of those who regard the Democrats in such a way. But clearly President Obama’s outreach efforts to evangelical communities during the campaign and since his election have paid off. His administr…
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