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Scott Walker Loves Jesus. That’s Nice

By Peter Laarman

…n as a wide-eyed kid). Kate Zernike had a very good piece in last Sunday’s New York Times about the deeper-level antagonism between capital and labor that lies beneath the seemingly placid soil of the Upper Midwest—America’s industrial heartland. Zernike cited the Allis-Chalmers dispute of 1946 outside of Milwaukee. In the history of the mighty Auto Workers, Allis-Chalmers was a notable skirmish. But I grew up less than ten miles from ground zero…

The Demographic that Should Keep Rove Awake at Night

By Katherine Stewart

…beliefs, just not necessarily about theistic entities; they have just as many “values” as any other group; and their presence is firmly rooted in American history in helping create the world’s first secular republic. Although the unaffiliated should not be conflated with atheists, it’s worth concentrating on them as they’re clearly the most feared subcategory. When atheists support same-sex marriage, for example, it’s not because they don’t believ…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…to the Second Amendment along with its deadly consequences, ICE raids on immigrant families fleeing even worse violence in their home countries, drone strikes, the environmental violence of fracking, deforestation and coal mining, and the daily threats faced by women, LGBTQ people and people of color are all evidence that we are hardly a merciful nation. We were built, after all, as the result of a protracted war, and we grew in power on the backs…

Did North Carolinians Vote Against their Own Beliefs?

By Peter Montgomery

…liciously have gone far beyond that to punish same-sex couples and their families and deny them equal rights as citizens. The second saddest number comes with its own silver lining. Public Policy Polling reported on Sunday that most North Carolina residents believe that gay couples should have access to some legal protections. But because most voters didn’t understand just how extreme and far-reaching the amendment before them today was, they woul…

Don’t Call It “Prayer Shaming”: Our Moral Failure Exposed

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…meaning and import of prayer. Layered approaches to prayer and “prayer shaming” dominated public discourse in the days following the shooting. On the right and left, religious and non-religious alike debated the efficacy and appropriateness of prayer. A select set of Senate Democrats tried to foreground the issue of gun control but to no avail, failing to upend the National Rifle Associations’ lucrative death grip on the trigger conscience of the…

By The Numbers: Jeb Opposes Francis on Climate Change at His Peril

By Daniel Schultz

…als, of course, but they’re not going to vote for Jeb anyway. There is one number Bush might want to worry about, though: 85. That’s the percent of Hispanic Catholics who think climate change is a real problem: For a guy who’s been touting his potential to draw Spanish-speaking voters into the Republican fold, this is a sticky situation. Hispanic Catholics, as it turns out, actually care about the environment, and so does the first pope from Latin…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…cause Christianity has historically claimed to possess ultimate truth, so any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. Minor variations are further magnified by, as James Madison put it, the “torrents of blood” that have been spilled, trying to eliminate religious differences and impose a state-sanctioned version of religious truth. In Oklahoma, a Sunday school teacher moonlighting as a state representative believes himself to be the highe…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…trip or civics lesson, his family had just fled Castro’s regime in Cuba. “Any time anyone is made less equal, we all are,” Irigonegaray says, noting that, “fear is a horribly paralyzing force and too many still choose not to speak out” against bigotry toward sexual and gender minorities. That fear of those who are different from us, according to Rev. Schlingensiepen, makes conservative Christians in the United States no different from other social…

Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015) and the Rise of Extreme Evangelicalism

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…expansion of U.S. power aligned with the rise of Billy Graham (his famous New York City crusade was in 1957), the founding of Campus Crusade of Christ (1951), and other evangelical groups aiming to fulfill the Great Commission. Elliot’s story emerged at the center of the wave of these movements. As global capitalism began to make middle-class life more and more comfortable, something was needed shake people out of their settled religious ways. Hu…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…ng this, the president made this endorsement without calling or preparing any of us. For many of us, it felt like a betrayal. Rev. Bryant went on to say that he and other black pastors felt “jilted” by the president, particularly since they had defended him against Franklin Graham’s recent attack on the president’s Christianity. Prof. Michael Eric Dyson gave an impassioned sermon on The Ed Show, calling out the black church and Rev. Bryant, Sophia…