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Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…for sale in LDS bookstores and on the shelves of LDS homes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when questioned about the ban in public, LDS Church leaders continued to sidestep its origins and rationale. Mormons hungry for a more direct approach welcomed LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley’s 2006 address, “The Need for Greater Kindness,” as a long-awaited denunciation of racism: “Racial strife still lifts its ugly head. I am advised that even ri…

Religious Right Targets Obama Picks, Daschle and Holder

By Bill Berkowitz

…percent pro-life during the 108th Congress (2003-04); 0 percent during the 107th Congress; 11 percent during the 106th Congress; and 20 percent during the 105th Congress.” Daschle’s rating by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) was just 50 percent as of 2003. Even if the religious right fails to prevent Daschle from taking his post—and all indicators point to the fact that it will—expect Daschle to be in their crosshairs on a regul…

Partisanship Is The New Civil Religion

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…id nothing” for the economy. Unemployment, he suggests, was still at 15% in 1940. No, what got us out of “the doldrums” (his word) was the War. This one is a puzzler. First, what would unemployment rates have been without the New Deal and Roosevelt’s elaborate system of public works projects? Second, we’ve already got two wars on our hands, and they aren’t helping the economy. In short, 2009 is not 1929. We really are in uncharted territory, as mo…

Gingrich Downplays Adelson Money, Stokes Fear of “Second Holocaust” at Florida Church

By Sarah Posner

…his daughter Bella was hospitalized.) Organizers said they had distributed 1,800 tickets, and the pews in the church were nearly full, with several hundred, if not nearly a thousand people in attendance. Gingrich was the only candidate to appear; Staver, the “forum’s” moderator took pains to point out that they had invited the other candidates. Santorum and Ron Paul had commitments outside of Florida. Mitt Romney, the candidate Staver and other l…

Culture Wars Today, Tomorrow, and Forever?

By Bill Berkowitz

…on Ogden’s nomination. According to Legal Times, “Senators have until Feb. 12 to submit questions in writing, and the Senate has a recess scheduled for the week of Feb. 16, potentially pushing a vote to the week of Feb. 23.” The campaign against Ogden was clearly a dry run for future anti-Obama efforts, particularly those related to the president’s judicial appointments. What are we learning from these early skirmishes about how the religious rig…

Covering Religion in The New Year: The Atheist Bus And More

By Diane Winston

…the atheist bus adverts, said: ‘You wait for ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people’s days and make them smile on their way to work.’” So will it be a year of smiles for the faithless—or, perhaps, the faithful? A lot depends on the economy. Religion didn’t fare particularly well during the Great Depression. Despite the seeming need for alternative realities, church attendance didn’t swell in the 193…

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…. Houston’s Joel Osteen has a net worth over $50m and a church that holds 16,800 but this is all he’s offering. pic.twitter.com/rmhdWK6ZAO — Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 28, 2017 What I mean is, Joel Osteen is not selling the preferential option for the poor. Your best life is not being flooded out of your house — ProfB (@AntheaButler) August 28, 2017 Whatever one’s opinion about Osteen, the Twitter storm above Lakewood Church perpetuated…

Trump is Helping the Economy… The Apocalypse Economy

By Jonathan Root

…to raise capital for Heritage USA. He was found guilty of fraud in October 1989 and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. He only served five. After being released from prison in 1994, Bakker wrote I Was Wrong (1996), in which he renounced the prosperity gospel and apologized for preaching a false message. Then he turned his gaze to another lucrative arena: the apocalypse industry. Here, Bakker has found a niche. As he put it on the show, his…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

Colorado’s fetal personhood ballot initiative petition failed to get enough valid signatures, and so the measure will not appear on the ballot, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced this morning. According to the Denver Post, some of the signatures were deemed invalid, so the petition was found to have only 85,800 valid signatures—305 signatures short of the required 86,105. Jennifer Mason, speaking for Personhood Colorado, said tha…

As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

By Robert P. Jones

…of one generation being visited down three or four generations (Exodus 20; Numbers 14; Deuteronomy 5; Jeremiah 32). This transmission isn’t mystical but is both genetic and cultural. Just as abuse begets abuse and addiction begets addiction, prejudice begets prejudice. In the Christian Scripture, Paul talks about the need to reckon not just with sinful individual nature but with “principalities and powers,” a theological way of describing the impe…