Religion Dispatches
…iscourse. Sure. He’s racist and sexist. I get that. Is this a problem? You bet! Does it make me cringe? Of course! But is it unfamiliar? Hell no! Racism and sexism are as American and foundational to our cultural make-up as democracy. Imus simply reflects America’s contradictions. What comes to mind for me is the greater problem: the perennial closeting of race and sex. Let’s all say this together: RACISM AND SEXISM EXIST AND ARE INTEGRAL PARTS OF…
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…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…
Read More…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…
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…up; or in her case, not. I suspect that Judge Noonan was considered a safe bet to balance the pro-choice president: an eminence gris whose conservative Catholic bona fides are polished by his claim that a fetus is essentially a person from the time of conception. Regardless of his intentions, anti-choice people must have been deeply disappointed that he did not take one for the team. Despite his valiant if ineffective effort to link anti-abortion…
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…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…
Read More…Nevada, Ken Buck of Colorado, Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Joe Miller of Alaska, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware. You can bet that no matter how the numbers finally shake out in next month’s election, Barton and DeMint, and their views on “Judeo-Christian heritage” and “biblical law,” will continue to have allies in high places….
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…rth and welcomed same-sex couples to their churches, offering blessings. I bet many would offer legal marriage as well, hardly poaching adherents from a tradition that seems happy to see us go. One million German-speaking Catholic women from five organizations signaled their view that same-sex couples be eligible for church blessings. New Ways Ministry reports almost every day on a new group stepping forward, most recently the Association of Catho…
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…r what grounds them biologically. Being “created in the image of God” is a better bet. We are all learning together about this, some of us more willing to admit what we do not know than others. But we can certainly agree in the meantime that persons trump genitals, that competence and willingness to serve are far more relevant than gender identity when it comes to Christian life. This means ordination and decision making for women on a par with me…
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…ez to pass immigration reform. As I said, were he alive today, it’s a safe bet that Chavez would be an opponent of any legislation that gave illegal immigrants even a chance at legal status.” The extent of this misrepresentation is stunning. Chavez opposed undocumented labor inasmuch as workers were exploited, used to depress wages, and undercut unionization efforts. While he did oppose Mexican guest worker programs he simultaneously campaigned fo…
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…ant measure? Is this not God’s “gracious good will” (Jonathan Edwards, you bet)? I digress, but only slightly. Here I am having a kind of dialogue with myself about work as blessing, not punishment; but this is the desperately-needed dialogue we are not having in the culture at large or even within US religious communities. I mean, think about it. Our president is a “socialist” because he thinks there might be something wrong with letting 50 milli…
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