Religion Dispatches
…a platform to a shallow version of orthodoxy, and missed the opportunity to challenge some implausible assertions. That’s not an outcome any news show, or its audience, wants or deserves….
Read More…t week, released a statement signed by 46 national religious leaders, affirming universal access to contraception as a “moral good.” The statement reads (emphasis mine): As religious leaders, we support universal access to contraception. We believe that all persons should be free to make personal decisions about their reproductive lives, their health and the health of their families that are informed by their culture, faith tradition, religious be…
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…Toni M. Bond, Co-Founder, Interfaith Voices for Reproductive Justice Rev. Mitzi J. Smith, PhD, J Davison Philips Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary Victor Anderson, Oberlin Theological School Professor of Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University, the Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences The Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Brite Divinity School Rev. Theresa S. Thames, DMin, Associate Dean of Rel…
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…seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal scholar Melissa Rogers is most decidedly not a member of the Christian right. Rogers, who has worked for the pro-church-state-separation group the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, and now has an affiliation with the Brookings Institution, i…
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…(On a separate note, floors aren’t particularly known to be COVID-19 transmission agents. They might get plenty of other nasty bugs that way, though.) Like the Trump administration’s bumbling efforts, these local responses to the current situation relate back to conceptions of truth on some level. On the one hand, while there’s a recognition of the coronavirus’ power, there’s a sense that it’s more important to preach a message of comfort or a wo…
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…o-Nazis arrived. Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza: The nazi groups just kept coming and coming. This is an exaggeration, but it felt like there were a million nazis, to like, 100 counter-protestors. That’s an exaggeration, but I’m just saying, that the number of nazis compared to counter-protestors was unreal. I’m just like, where in the hell did all these people come from? They took over the fucking city. So as things were heating up, we saw riot gea…
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…hite evangelicals agreed with the statement: “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” The mythology of Canaanite conquest undergirds the “Jericho March” rallies that took place in the wake of the 2020 election, of Christians blowing shofars during the January 6th attack of the Capitol building, and of political campaigns such as Doug Mastria…
Read More…major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democrats across the board, Sapp overstates the losses by a factor of two. The actual decreases in support between 2006 and 2010 for Democratic candidates in the House were 8 points among all white Protestants (37 percent to 29 p…
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…e crossroads of intersecting identities and convictions: black, LGBTQ-affirming, feminist, progressive, a lover of bowties—and deeply Mormon. Two weeks later, he would speak calmly and decisively at an anti-discrimination rally. But in the car that evening he spoke quickly and excitedly, stumbling over his words a bit but still impressively knowledgeable and articulate, referencing countless texts and ideas I’d never even heard of. I asked if we c…
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