Religion Dispatches
…d that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion. He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video’s purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula’s address. —- For more RD coverage of the events in Libya see “Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuses,” by Haroon Moghul — ed….
Read More…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…
Read More…Dhaka, Bangladesh. According to a report from the UN Development Program, participants affirmed that “Religious leaders and faith-based organizations have a crucial role to play in upholding the human rights of sexual minorities and ensuring appropriate and accessible health services, including for men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people.” The meeting provided an avenue for open, inclusive exploratory discussions on religious persp…
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…in 2007, always made a point of the fact that he was a businessman, not a pastor. There can be no doubt, however, that thanks to the empire he inherited and expanded at Liberty, one of the largest evangelical Christian institutions of higher education in the world, Falwell was an extremely influential evangelical leader. Once known for the masculine swagger he exhibited in behavior like his infamous “end those Muslims” comments, evangelicals will…
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…t of how Hitler rose to power in Germany with massive Christian support as part of the film’s warning about how bad Christian nationalism could get. Also sounding the alarm is evangelical pastor and former elite Christian Right activist Rob Schenck, who recounts how one of the theologians who was most frequently cited and recommended when he was studying theology, the Lutheran Gerhard Kittel, was an avid believer in Nazism and produced theological…
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…rivate dollars and is not an official government event, the US president’s participation with senators and congressional representatives in a highly publicised gathering to pray in the name of Jesus sends a message—the message that to be a good American, one should also be a Christian. And this message enables authoritarian Christian nationalists in their pursuit of a theocratic political agenda. The anti-pluralism inherent in the National Prayer…
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…nging rainbow flags to promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is a cheap tactic if LGBTQ employees are treated poorly when it comes to pay, benefits, leave, promotion, and job security. Divide-and-rule is not a new tactic, for it’s well known in the Indian subcontinent that the British pitted one local Raja against the other based on tribe, religion, or caste—among other factors. The same applies to corporations as they stoke divisiveness…
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…lationary impact. (Do these inflation hawks ever fuss over the debate-free passage of ginormous unpaid-for military appropriations? Just wondering.) And then there’s the “Christian” (i.e., evangelical Protestant) reaction to Biden’s action, as reported in Christianity Today and elsewhere, where scholars and cranks play whack-a-mole with Bible verses having to do with debt. What I like best is the Can we proof-text this? We probably shouldn’t. But…
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…versity, a school affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Paxton attends a Southern Baptist Church, and, as R.G. Ratcliffe has argued in the pages of Texas Monthly, he’s “a fundamentalist who wears his Christianity on his sleeve” and who uses his powerful position “as a cudgel in the culture wars for the Christian Right.” In short, the toxic theology of the Christian Right that denies the validity of queer existence and teaches th…
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…t vaccinated no matter what. There’s also been a lot of reporting over the past year in particular about how right-wing extremists have been infiltrating and subverting more mainstream conservative causes, such as the white nationalists working their way into the anti-abortion movement. It’s not a huge deal, but given his other reporting interests, I’m a bit surprised that Jenkins left this angle untouched. We know from his own reporting that Chri…
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