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The “Obamosque” Smears and the Money Fueling Them

By Sarah Posner

…Americans apparently believe President Obama is a Muslim. (A Pew poll out today shows that figure at 19%). Why do that many Americans believe that? Could it be the use of terms like “Obamosque?” Or this photograph on the Special Guests website? Today Special Guests is also promoting the special guest of Scott Wheeler, a long-time operative of right-wing smear campaigns against Democratic candidates and office-holders. Wheeler is the executive dir…

Hobby Lobby Does Not Compel Anti-LGBT Religious Exemption, Legal Scholars Tell Obama

By Sarah Posner

…100 religious leaders take the same position as the legal scholars signing today’s letter and oppose an exemption, as I reported here.) Today’s legal scholars’ letter takes issue with the legal analysis in the June 25 letter, specifically its interpretation of religious exemptions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment. The accommodation under Title VII permits religious employers to hire only candida…

Beck’s “Dream”—Our Nightmare

By Julie Ingersoll

…on and his revisionist history; which relies in part of the work of Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony. More Barton Revisionist History In his essay “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” Barton quotes extensively from the writings of the founders and claims that many of them were abolitionists. He maintains that the overwhelming majority of the founders were “sincere Christians” who thought American slavery was “unbiblical,” blamed England for imposin…

Forgiveness

By Amina Wadud

…ther Dr. Freud or Allah was at work about my complaining yesterday, and so today I do not fast. In my younger lither days I would have to persevere through out the day fasting without suhur, but not now, not at my age, so I am having my tea as I type. No need to lie about it, no need to pretend. Missing this day is only an offense between me and Allah. The rules for remaking a day of missed fast, for what ever reason, will apply; and to these I hu…

Why Egypt is America’s Enemy

By Haroon Moghul

…t would beg to differ, and sometimes for reasons not dissimilar to Muslim frustrations with secular elites). In the Muslim world, on the other hand, the secular brand is badly tarnished, because it’s often associated with either the colonizer or indigenous elites who forced local cultures to change. (Ataturk and Reza Shah, secular leaders of Turkey and Iran, obligated women to uncover their heads and men to change how they covered theirs; in Turke…

Your Uterus Is “An Important Subject” About Which Your Fellow Citizens “Wish To Converse”

By Sarah Posner

…rence Thomas, resentfully complained that because of the narrowness of the ruling, “Today’s opinion carries forward this Court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents.” Despite the grumbling concurrence, abortion opponents are celebrating a victory for the free speech rights of their sidewalk counselors, even portraying women who have been or will be talked out of…

The Non-Existent Tea Party-Religious Right God Gap

By Sarah Posner

…ligious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, spoke of it today when he said, citing Romans 13, that there are “only three divinely ordained institutions: home, church, and civil government,” which is “ordained by God to punish those who do wrong and reward those who do that which is right.” In the religious right and for some tea partiers, that “limited” sphere of authority for government is exceeded by, say, passing health care…

How the Religious Left, or Whatever It’s Called, Failed at the Budget Big Game

By Sarah Posner

…o protect funding for the nation’s most vulnerable” in the Capitol Rotunda today. Nobody is watching. Nobody is listening. Why? While a minister being led away in handcuffs might make for good press, it’s a completely ineffectual as a political strategy. Harold Meyerson writes today of the Democrats “losing the big game” and how they “are getting clobbered” in the war of ideas: [T]he continual stream of crap coming from both Republicans and, of l…

First Things First: Sexual Equality Just Is

By Kate Blanchard

…nt to Eve in Genesis: “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” But alas, he does not make a Christian argument. It is a shame (if not surprising in the Trump era) that First Things has lost sight of its mission and succumbed to the worst that secular ethics has to offer. Those who read scripture know that “in the beginning” women and men are created alike, in the image of God. And the first man soon declares his love fo…

Disaster Theology: Blame and Powerlessness in Japan

By Clark Strand

…s. No one shared my concern. Things got worse until the final disaster struck— Few were aware that the world was star-crossed And dreadfully out of kilter. If you really want to understand this tragedy, look deep inside Rather than helplessly bemoan your cruel fate. In other words, “I hate to say, ‘I told you so’—but I told you so!” Fortunately, we know today that tsunamis are caused by earthquakes and other forms of seismic activity, and t…