Religion Dispatches
…romotional videos featuring Deseret Media executive (and former LDS Church official) Shari Dew with 1980s-style stock footage of apparently independent women jogging, counting money, and sitting at their kitchen tables with their children. And all of this about 30 years after the LDS Church helped torpedo the Equal Rights Amendment through a concerted political organizing campaign similar to the Church’s involvement in California’s Proposition 8….
Read More…erica down the inevitable path to an Islamic theocracy. WyWatch, on its website, clearly states that it’s “Judeo-Christian values” that should dictate our laws: The Mission of WyWatch is to promote and support legislation that sustains our constitutional rights, upholds Judeo-Christian values on which the nation was founded, protects innocent life from conception to natural death, preserves the rights of parents to raise and determine the educatio…
Read More…tivists, such as the organizers of the April 6th movement, but there is no official board, party or group that decides on behalf of the demonstrators. How would you present this revolt or uprising to American readers? First, I would like to stress that it’s a revolution, not just an uprising. I would also like to emphasize that politics in Egypt is no longer the simple binary of Government versus Muslim Brotherhood, but that there is a third way…
Read More…course those who would not tell the truth about him,” said the White House official, who would not speak for attribution. “There are folks who have a misunderstanding of the president’s faith and who repeat that misunderstanding.” Joel Hunter, one of the president’s evangelical allies, is equally mild: “He needs to openly declare himself a Christian and not settle for people’s skepticism at that point,” said Hunter, who leads an evangelical church…
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…nceived advertising stunt, set off buzz and worry such that this Sunday an official correction was issued from the company. “We recently issued a press release on Zodiac signs and accident rates, which led to some confusion around whether astrological signs are part of the underwriting process,” the statement reads. “Astrological signs have absolutely no role in how we base coverage and set rates. Rating by astrology would not be actuarially soun…
Read More…t, LifeWatch, a group that has roots in the United Methodist Church but no official standing, sponsored a worship service before the march. Reports indicate that a mere seventeen people were in attendance, including some who are pro-choice. It was a day for papal flags, banners like “Archdiocese of Chicago,” handmade life-size crosses, and even a gold crozier that someone brought along to add gravitas, or maybe just in place of a cane. It was hard…
Read More…culum. Because they are not subject to the same formal adoption process as official textbooks, supplemental materials used in local school districts could rely on some seriously dubious source matter. (Discovery Institute material, perhaps?) Expect the battles over this issue to take place in Texas and Louisiana. Well, last week, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics appeared on a list of publishers who plan to submit supplementary materials for r…
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…Georgia. These ideas continue to be repackaged by right-wing groups. In the 1960s and the 1970s these claims appeared as conspiracy theories peddled by the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby. The Zeitgeist website lists Nation writer William Greider — a longtime critic of the Fed’s policies from the left — as an “information source,” particularly his 1989 tome, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. But the list is…
Read More…wo years ago, I met Major Laurel Williams, who had served in the Army since 1985, but noticed a distinct change in the religious environment around 2005, when there was a highly noticeable uptick in the number of services, prayer breakfasts, emails from chaplains, displays of crosses, and other evangelical activity that struck her as “excessive.” But what bothered Major Williams most was the Strong Bonds program, which she attended at an Orlando h…
Read More…unmistakable in my 2008 reporting: In fact, at least six top Aish HaTorah officials are tied to “Obsession” via Aish spin-offs, including Clarion’s president and two vice presidents. Clarion’s address is also the same as that of Aish HaTorah International, a fundraising arm of Aish HaTorah. In addition to being available on DVD, Iranium will be shown in limited release in theaters starting February 8, and will be screened on Capitol Hill in conju…
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