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Don’t Blame Black Voters: The Obama Non-Effect

By Jonathan L. Walton

…oor of the black community is analytically, descriptively, and politically flawed. Regional and Religious, not Racial This blame game is analytically flawed, as the underlying assumptions are premised on a skewed racial causality. The so-called “Obama Effect” contends that black people showed up en masse to vote for Barack Obama, and in turn, supported Prop 8. For the sake of argument, lets accept exit poll results that 70 percent of black voters…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…, in which a character called “Reverend Ike” says, “Religion is like a big flashlight. You shine it around you to help you illuminate your life, and find what it is you’re missing.” It’s not a terribly complex or comprehensive answer, but offers a distinct alternative to the God-haunted, belief-oriented versions of religion offered by my C-grade student named Bill. Bill gets this low grade because his definition of religion appears to have been cu…

Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

By Michael Schulson

…e walls tumbling down? When the Freedom From Religion Foundation puts your phone call on hold, you don’t hear muzak. Instead, the phone system plays a homegrown jingle featuring lines like “Everyone is tired of your piety / get off your knees and get to work” and “We’ve got to fight the battle of church and state / or the walls come tumbling down.” The receptionist told me that FFRF co-president Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher and occasi…

Religious Hostility to Gay Nigerians; The Pope’s Visit To Africa; Ireland’s Religious Schools Can’t Discriminate Against Gays; Orthodox Church in Georgia Leads Anti-Gay Forces; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…stified defense of Georgian tradition in the face of encroaching Western influence.” ISIS: Executions of gay men continue; cited by UK’s Cameron in debate on military action Bassem Mroue reports for Associated Press on the ongoing targeting and killing of gay men by Islamic State militants. Mroue interviewed a Syrian man who has fled to Turkey: Life for gays in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, was always hidden, Halaby said. When the secular-led peac…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…. At the first, about a dozen volunteers spent the night making almost 300 phone calls and collecting pledges of volunteer support and contributions from 50 new supporters. Add that to the five other locations holding similar phone banks or collecting post cards of support, and I’m sure we easily got our 300 today. In addition, Equality Maryland hosted an interfaith meeting to mobilize supportive faith leaders. It was so great to see such a wonder…

Cloverfield: Sin & Redemption, with Monsters

By Gabriel Mckee

…film decries are redeemed by the monster’s presence—that search for a cell phone charger becomes a selfless quest to save a trapped friend, with dozens of selfless acts along the way. In the midst of judgment, we see glimpses of a New Jerusalem. But the creature is a cleansing fire without which that redemption would be impossible. Ultimately, Cloverfield is a movie about how tragedy can bring us out of ourselves and into a greater community; its…

Mormons Prepare to March in LGBT Pride Parades Nationwide

By Joanna Brooks

…ty [women’s auxiliary] meeting was a Proposition 8 organizing meeting—with phone trees and the bishop coming in and saying you’ve got to do this. We just left shaking, and she hasn’t gone back. She never set foot in that building again. Through my kids’ eyes, I see things in a fresh way. So I was thinking about the Utah Pride Parade, which is now almost bigger than the Days of ’47 [Pioneer Day parade commemorating Mormon pioneers]. This is a para…

A Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit

By Joanna Piacenza

…ropean_douchebag” apart, castigating him for not only taking a creepy smartphone picture of an innocent young woman, but for taunting her based on her physical appearance—a physical appearance that, in her mind (the only one that matters) is divinely inspired. Of course the woman’s appearance only seems odd to some because of our own culturally mutated and narrow-minded gender norms. The virtual conflict became very real when the anonymous woman g…

The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

By Spencer Dew

…sion with his own person image, as in the recently released transcripts of phone calls with Mexico and Australia, is all too apparent as a dominant and guiding focus) or a problem with those picked to actually “communicate” on behalf of the White House (from a Press Secretary who hid “among” bushes and banned cameras from press conferences to a Director of Communications who, in the early and yet also late days of his short-lived job accused one u…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…his group. In doing so, they actually helped define it (and possibly overinflate it). Evangelical leaders trying to help build political muscle for their flocks—especially Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—encouraged these efforts, cited the polls, and at times even commissioned them. Today, when media outlets talk about “evangelicals,” they almost always mean white, politically conservative, born-again Protestants, unless they specify otherwise. Th…