Religion Dispatches
…et, maintaining order is a challenge, even for Mormons who are historical experts at keeping track of things. “It seems to me that it would be virtually impossible to organize Mormon blogging,” Haglund said. “The nature of the medium overcomes even Mormons’ well-known tendency to defer to authority. There simply isn’t any central body that could exert control.” Tight-Knit or Mutually Disinterested? Thing started out calmly enough. Nathan Oman, a l…
Read More…diciary has taken us. Everyone today seems to think the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. I guess you could ask any 10 people if that is not so and I will bet you most of them will say, well, sure that is so. And some would point out that is in the First Amendment. Wrong. Miller then recommended the writings of David Barton, and proceeded to quote Benjamin Rush, who, when asked whether he was an aristocrat or…
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…tions about structural racism. This is what you would want in a sensitive exploration of a complex topic. And other researchers see corresponding trends in their own datasets. It’s unlikely that anyone who has studied the subject for more than the time it takes to read a few Wikipedia articles will be shocked to hear that American Christianity is part and parcel of a white supremacist social order. American society is racist, the church is part of…
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…are official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.” Crucially, Price also denounced the Obama administration’s landmark support for transgender students as an “absurd” and “clear invasion of privacy.” If Price can’t acknowledge that a transgender girl should be able to use the ladies’ room like all her girlf…
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…citizen is permitted to sponsor his or her spouse; Leahy’s measure would extend this same right to same-sex couples by adding the words “or permanent partner” to sections of the Immigration and Naturalization Act that apply to married couples. The same penalties for fraud would apply as currently apply to straight people who claim to be married to citizens: gay bi-national couples would be required to provide proof that they meet the definition o…
Read More…as revealed that he was gay and had threatened to deport an undocumented Mexican ex-boyfriend. Yet Romney forges on, with his advisors proclaiming confidence in their deep pockets and ability to buy airtime, even though the campaign’s ground game is not as strong as it may seem. That ground-level weakness reflects the foundational flaw of the Romney campaign. Romney banked on the idea that conservative Christian voters would come around—with enoug…
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…rony. Biblical capitalism isn’t, ultimately, a supply-and-demand religion. Between business conservatism’s love of laissez-faire and religious conservatism’s love of an interventionist god—McCain’s tax cuts for the rich and Palin’s prayers for a new Alaskan pipe line—the only salvation to be found is in the form of bail-outs, indulgences, to borrow a pre-Protestant term. And those are reserved for “the new chosen,” as the Fellowship calls America’…
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…she has in her forty books and one hundred articles, for a rejection of sexism and sexual pathology, an embrace of other cultures and religions, an option for the poor and a focus on the environment. Facing entrenched Vatican power, can one conclude that she is deluded, masochistic? Are millions of progressive Catholics who share her views deluded, engaged in a futile exercise? That is always a possibility. The direction of the Roman administrati…
Read More…only for religious believers. (In the military conscientious objector context, the set of protected beliefs was expanded to include a philosophical opposition to war that was of a similar scope and gravity to a religious objection.) But a belief that vaccines cause autism (which is contrary to all scientific evidence) is not the kind of life philosophy that exemption laws are generally designed to protect. And in fact, there have been recent calls…
Read More…peats that she is a straight up atheist, not agnostic, not wondering. Safe bet that this is the most often the word ‘atheist’ has been used in a single episode of a network drama. The wrinkle is that her daughter is part of a youth-y evangelical group, having converted a few seasons back. The writers use her for comic effect sometimes, as when the grownups are in crisis around the kitchen table and you suddenly hear a group of teenage girls beltin…
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