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Religious Right Dream of Privatized Public Education Gets Boost

By Julie Ingersoll

…ld have a significant voice on the governing board and reserve half of the seats in the classrooms for children of employees. These efforts and others will be supported during the upcoming National School Choice Week (January 23-29) in which Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (and director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition during the 1990s) will be joined by other conservative leaders in an eleven-city (Detroit, Phoenix…

Mao, Meet Confucius: China’s Religious Revolution

By Kwok Pui-lan

…a seat. Chong Yi Church in Hangzhou, one of the largest churches in China, seats about 5,000 and easily fills to capacity on Sundays. As membership of mainline denominations in the U.S. continues to decline, many Westerners marvel at the rate of growth of Chinese Christianity. In 1949 there were about 700,000 Chinese Protestants; today the number is estimated to be 50-80 million, if one includes members of house churches. Adding 8-12 million Cat…

Did The God Gap Cost the Democrats in 2010?

By Daniel Schultz

…er) sums it up pretty well: Again, could Democrats have held some of those seats with appeals to white religious voters? Perhaps. But the more likely explanation is that these are conservative districts that would have been tough to hold in a friendly cycle, let alone one as surly as this one was. Living as I do in one of those rural districts (my county was a prime mover in Russ Feingold’s downfall), I can tell you that nobody gave a crap about “…

Elections Show Growing Support for LGBT from People of Faith

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ty backed candidates like Rand Paul and Pat Toomey preparing to take their seats in the Senate. Advocates on both sides of the aisle almost uniformly agreed that the large agenda items such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Defense of Marriage Act repeal, and passing domestic partner benefits for government employees would be nonstarters in the 112th Congress. But most also agreed that “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal might still garner bipa…

Dining with Dawkins in the Humanist Bosom

By Edward J. Larson

…ut how thrilled they were to hear him. Some said they came to conference—a number of them from quite far away—primarily because Dawkins was going to speak. It was something akin to the excitement that I once noted among participants at an evangelical conclave before a sermon by Billy Graham. An appearance by the Pope must arouse similar feelings among Catholics. Too bad secular humanists don’t do healings or alter calls because it was the type of…

David Barton’s New Get Out The Vote Effort

By Sarah Posner

…as the Potter’s House and the party’s ’72-Hour Plan’ that helped them gain seats in the 2002 congressional elections. The battle for Ohio, so the cliché goes, depends on turnout.” By 2010, the religious right’s messaging and get-out-the-vote efforts in evangelical churches has probably reached its saturation point. The Alliance Defense Fund and other religious right organizations have launched efforts like “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” designed to test…

Kagan, “Jewish Bolshevism,” and the Legacy of a Nomination

By Gordon D. Newby

…2 percent of the US population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity? If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith. If Kagan is confirmed, three of the four justices nominated by Democratic presidents will be from New Y…

American Supports Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill

By Michael Wilkerson

…ed smooth jazz in the background. When Engle himself finally took the microphone at about 5 p.m., he dug almost immediately into the controversy, saying he hadn’t known about the bill and nearly canceled his trip over questions raised by his presence. But at no point did he contest Oyet’s support for the bill. “We know that Uganda has been under tremendous pressure—the church. We felt that same pressure. But I felt like The Call was to come and jo…

Good Hair, Good God! The Divine Politics of African-American Hair

By Anthea Butler

…documentary informs us that the hair cut for temple sacrifices is now the number-one export out of India. The fact that tonsure, a religious act, has turned into a profiteering scheme is remarkable. But there also exist unscrupulous people who are stealing women’s hair, either while they sleep or in movie theaters where their braids or hair hang over the seats; while a woman is enjoying the latest from Bollywood, someone is cutting her hair and e…

A Jew in Church? No Big Deal

By Benjamin Weiner

…sk we all share as religious functionaries in a secular world: filling the seats. And journeys of discovery can seem less like the parable of the man who traveled to a far-off land to learn there was treasure under his house, and more like the tepid Rupert Holmes “Pina Colada Song,” in which bored lovers reignite their passion through a feint at adultery. I am by no means eager or nostalgic for religious conflict, but, had I been undercover as his…