…exas’s H.B. 45 (codified at § 22.0041 and § 22.022 of the Texas Government Code), states that “litigants in actions under the Family Code involving a marriage relationship… are protected against violations of constitutional rights and public policy in the application of foreign law.” The bill doesn’t explicitly reference sharia or Islamic law (likely because a similar bill in Oklahoma that did specifically mention sharia was struck down as discrim…
…aders worldwide. We expand God’s kingdom by helping to build relationships between revival leaders, ministries, and organizations around the globe, and to equip them to transform their spheres of influence. Global Legacy has been rebranded as the Bethel Leaders Network. It’s clear that one who’s regarded as an apostle or belongs to an apostolic network is not necessarily always part of the most Wagnerian segment of the NAR. The fact that the term…
…ons with tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Those changes were set in motion after record amounts of campaign spending by (c)(4) groups in 2012, and tea party complaints that their applications for (c)(4) status were improperly denied for partisan reasons. Although Congressional Republicans tried to make a scandal of the application process, further congressional investigation showed both conservative and progr…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…politics is almost irresistible.” Indeed, he succumbs, dividing the world between good liberals and “tacky” conservatives, the distinguished and the sophomoric. When confronted by evidence that these categories are not so hard and fast as his inner social scientist would like, he falls back on a rhetoric that constructs a reasonable middle by dismissing all to its left and its right as paranoid. For Randy, the center always holds. But the center…
…institutions like the 1788 Constitution, the presidency, and the military code of honor. But at what costs do we maintain a revered institution like the military code of honor? Holocaust levels of genocide threaten the Syrian Kurds. Why isn’t the prospect of mass murder enough to make Mattis reconsider the politics of personal honor? If that grim prospect is not enough, what is? Mattis’ deferral to presidential rights, for instance, should challe…
…er have and they never will. The coming four years will see a widening gap between the people and their President on this fundamental issue. As Americans come to know how extreme his position is, the intensity of the struggle to protect these children will only increase…” – A Grave Mistake and an Abiding Hope, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life “The election results and the scandal of the Catholic vote only confirm that we are still suffering fr…
…e is any passion at all in these recitations, it is a passion in the head. Better than none, I suppose. But if we want to galvanize people who themselves are not struggling around the grim state of the economy, reeling off the facts won’t cut it. People must be invited to engage directly with those who suffer: that is where transformation can begin. So yes, religious progressives should at least try to temper the bad habit of imagining they can r…
…ngelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patriarchy here. While Christians traditionally hold that God is beyond gender (even while often using masculine language for God), in “The Tenets of Bib…
…gelicals sometimes claim they “hate religion, but love Jesus,” but you can bet the RFI wouldn’t therefore claim that evangelicals have no religious rights. Slide from a presentation used by the author in religious studies classes. So why isn’t The Satanic Temple a religion? The RFI doesn’t say. It’s implied they’re not a religion because they don’t believe in God. But in United States v. Seeger (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that belief in a Supr…
…s likely to say the quiet part out loud, Hyde-Smith would have been a good bet. She joked about sitting in the front row at a public hanging during her campaign to win a senate seat in the state which had the highest number of recorded lynchings. The Christian Nationalist identity draws legitimacy from the motto foisted upon this country during the Civil War and the Red scare. Our government is legitimizing Christian Nationalism. It’s time we get…
