Religion Dispatches
The religious right is worried about Barack Obama and his family. Specifically, they worry that the First Family is not going to church. Well, actually, they’re worried that President Obama has “misled” them about his commitment to warming a pew every Sunday. As a candidate, Mr. Obama made his Christian faith and involvement in a local church community with regular church attendance a key component of his campaign. Once he was elected President,…
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If you had to choose a word to describe the news of today’s Supreme Court ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, you could do worse than “stupid.” In case you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, Masterpiece involves a Colorado baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple due to his religious beliefs. He was substantially fined by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, but with the help of the ADF, appealed the case all the way…
Read MoreOne might legitimately ask: “Why, of all things, a piece devoted to Satanists?” Good question. First off, while the year in religion didn’t go too well, as Daniel Schultz points out in his wrap-up, it was the Satanists who managed to give us a couple of the brighter spots. Second, despite the temptation to assume that Satanism is essentially a sophisticated group of pranksters with a flair for the dramatic–”part of an incredibly elaborate mockume…
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In the relatively calm seas of the Christian media, a storm has erupted between Christianity Today, arguably the mouthpiece of contemporary American evangelicalism, and the Christian Post, a smaller competitor. At the center of the storm is David Jang, a popular preacher in East Asia but a relatively unknown figure in the United States, who has ties to the late Rev. Moon’s Unification Church and, according to sources in a recent Christianity Toda…
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As a Christian pastor and professor, I make my living with words. When Donald Trump dismisses his own violent and regressive speech with the slogan “it’s just words,” as he did during last night’s depressing civic spectacle, my own concern about the deterioration of our public conversation deepens. This week’s revelations of Trump’s self-described “locker-room talk” (in fact, a conversation conducted in his workplace) come after months of mean-sp…
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“Man, as many people as we have in this school here, we ought to take over Woodland Park.” Thus spake theocratic leader Andrew Wommack at a political mobilization conference in April at the Charis Bible College he heads. He hasn’t yet taken the town, but the four-candidate slate for the school board backed by his Truth and Liberty Coalition won their races in November 2021 to take control of the five-member board. It’s a start. But Wommack’s ambi…
Read MoreLast week, I got a crazy email from “Joan” (who has hijacked an email list I’m on for animal rescue to send around her political opinions) arguing that Obama should be impeached because he is a Muslim (complete with a promo promising free guns, paid for by “a millionaire” who wants you “protected against what’s coming.”) The video in the email is by evangelist Jack van Impe, known for his premillennial rapture theology and his disconnected rambli…
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In early April of last year, at a conference in Jerusalem of American evangelicals organized by Pastor John Hagee, Benjamin Netanyahu told the audience that Israel had no better friends than America’s Christian Zionists. “This is a friendship of the heart, a friendship of common roots, and a friendship of common civilization,” Netanyahu said. Now, nearly a year later, with Netanyahu cobbling together a ruling coalition in Israel, three men of the…
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After Barack Obama pointed out in a televised address on the San Bernardino shootings that Muslim Americans occupy many familiar social roles including “sports heroes,” Donald Trump offered an incredulous tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/673741357190615040?ref_src=twsrc^tfw Most American sports fans, even casual ones, know of Muhammad Ali, whose picture has unsurprisingly graced the majority of subsequent media reports on the acc…
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Facebook’s ban of LifeSiteNews a notoriously ultraconservative website that regularly spreads disinformation about abortion—for its COVID violations—puts into sharp relief the tolerance of misogyny and violence against women on Facebook and in our culture more broadly. While many may have missed this decision in the midst of the controversy over Facebook’s ban of Trump, the rationale for the ban of LifeSiteNews was the spreading of “false informa…
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