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Big MoPublican Primary 2012: Dignity Watch

By Joanna Brooks

…Romney remind me of the premium Mormon culture has placed on clean-cut all-American likeability. Since the middle of the twentieth-century, that’s been the ticket we’ve tried to ride away from our frontier origins and melt into the suburban middle class. And still, Mormons consistently find our faith ranking consistently low in public esteem. Perhaps there is a lesson in all of this for the Big MoPublican Primary contenders? When it comes to faith…

After Westboro: The Trouble With “Tolerance”

By Cody J. Sanders

…eality. Tolerance allows our unearned privilege (whether racial privilege, class privilege, heterosexist privilege, etc.) to go unquestioned and unchallenged. So beneath the theological surface of the iceberg’s tip—Westboro and the like—we do not find less hateful and violent theological and ideological views, just more subtly expressed ones. Unfortunately, it is the power that does not look like power that is most effective in maintaining circums…

Creationists Try to Claim Scopes

By Lauri Lebo

…into public school science class. I have an article in today’s Scientific American about the proposed legislation, as well as continuing efforts in Texas and Louisiana to water down the teaching of evolution. What makes the Tennessee bill so interesting is that the man who leading the campaign is invoking the name of John Scopes, the science teacher convicted in 1925 for teaching evolution: [T]oday’s evolutionary scientists have become the modern…

On Women’s Equality Day, Going Back to the Sacred Texts of Feminism

By Betty M. Bayer

…markers in the longer march to women’s equality might belong to another galaxy entirely. There is, as I’ve suggested, a kind of “present absence” of feminist voices, review and analysis. There are, of course, plenty of feminist scholars, politicians, economist,s and religious thinkers; so many, in fact, that one could fill entire panels and news programs regularly with a range of women and political feminist views. One has to ask—especially in th…

The Night of the Farting Dog: An Atheist in Freefall

By Beatrice Marovich

…chniques, designed to still the brain and calm the soul—those many popular Americanized adaptations of Eastern practices—didn’t help at all. In fact, they made him worse. Sitting still in meditation gave him just enough time and space to sense that the world might be closing in on him. So he took Lorezepam instead. Salzman then went through his own version of the dark night of the soul which he calls “night of the farting dog.” In the midst of his…

Can Poetry Heal the Planet?

By Gary Gach

…g, to note three reasons why. One is the still-marginal place of poetry in American culture. True, we’ve sparked a now-global revival of spoken arts in the form of hip-hop and rap. But for book publishers, the “poetry marketplace” (a kind of oxymoron, since poetry operates largely outside the cash nexus), is largely fueled by writing programs in academia. True, Coleman Barks’ renditions of medieval Sufi poet Rumi captivated a national audience, fo…

Is Wisconsin Union-Busting Religiously Sanctioned?

By Julie Ingersoll

…America, joined the anti-union chorus today. DeMar promotes his views in a number of venues, each tailored to connect with a specific group. His American Vision is explicitly Reconstructionist, arguing that there is no neutrality and that all the positions he takes are rooted in biblical law. Vision2America, though, has a slightly different audience, so while the article focuses only on the Wisconsin budget crisis, it’s important to remember that…

Apoplectic about Abortion: One Woman’s Emotional Roller Coaster

By Donna Schaper

…, “more moral policing by big government.” Did these electeds never take a class in logic? Do they really “think with their d—-s?” Forgive the expression, but it fits. Political logic would attach family planning to a decrease of the deficit and increase the funding for it. One d-word appears to be in the way of another. More unwanted children require more schooling, polices and services. Duh. To even bring up the possibility (just raised, and tha…

Which Side Are You On?

By Daniel Schultz

…It’s not going to work. We are in the midst of a full-on, honest-to-gosh, class war. Gov. Walker and governors like him all across the nation are trying to take a slice out of the ass of the poor, the working and middle classes, so that they can defend the privilege of the rich not to pay high taxes and corporations to, well, pretty much to do whatever the hell they want. Walker and his colleagues have no vision of community, no understanding of…

Evangelicals and “Orphan Care”

By Daniel Schultz

…lievers in our Lord Jesus Christ, with equality across racial, gender, and class differences.” On the other hand, a statement of faith for an alliance to promote adoption? Even if it is meant to be a church-based movement, this strikes me as rather odd, as does the first article in that statement: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” What that has to do with adoption is beyond me. Still, the bo…