Religion Dispatches
…ey on American Jewish attitudes. His money isn’t about 2016 or even 2020 or 2024, it’s about staving off the shifting views of American Jews about Israel, or at least constraining political dialogue about it. Citizens United enabled Adelson to pour as much of his money as he wants into influencing elections, but that’s really a misnomer. He’s not influencing the outcome of elections, but enforcing how candidates speak. Case in point (a story we kn…
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…help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5th, 2024. It’s a great revival. “Upon taking office…” Trump makes several concrete policy promises that flow from this White Christian nationalist vision. It’s not worth quoting Trump’s rambling justifications for the policy proposals he connects to this worldview. Lest anyone think Trump’s White Christian nationalism is empty rhetoric, however, this speech also included promi…
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…e paragraph Rep. Raskin quoted at the Summit for Religious Freedom in April 2024—think of what it must have been like to read or hear those words in the bleak winter of December 1776. The American people needed a victory on which to pin the last shreds of their hope. They needed a win. General Washington had Paine’s words read aloud to his soldiers on Christmas night before they crossed the Delaware River and routed the British and Hessians at Tre…
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…a blessed day”? Perhaps this question wasn’t on your American controversies 2024 bingo card; it certainly wasn’t on mine. But when Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery described this situation as “creeping Christian nationalism” in a now-deleted tweet this past weekend she got pummeled, with responses ranging from mildly critical to disturbingly trollish. Some saw in her tweet, with some justification, the kind of smug progressivism that man…
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…n 2016, and well after he’s forgotten by 2020, Peter Kassig could’ve run in 2024. And why not? He certainly had the credentials. After high school, Peter became a U.S. Army Ranger, and was deployed to Iraq for several months with a special operations unit. Peter later returned to the Middle East as a medical relief worker. While delivering supplies to a town in Syria, however, he was abducted by ISIS. Peter’s journey to Islam began before his capt…
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…r president who’s currently the leading Republican nominee for president in 2024. But he is also, of course, a twice-impeached president who attempted to steal an election he lost via a raft of illegal schemes, the chief of which was his incitement of a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building that put his own vice president’s life in jeopardy and resulted in the deaths of seven people, plus two US Capitol police officers who later took t…
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…verred, “is predict which individual upon hearing the rhetoric of clear or coded incitement will turn to violence.” Berlet’s essay was titled “Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence.” Indeed, villain identification has been going on for a long time, and NAR leaders are now featuring ancient scripts for modern violence and religious war. We hear it in the form of imprecatory prayers by religious and politic…
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…ng that flies.” “This is not just an attack on Israel,” stated Nikki Haley, 2024 presidential hopeful and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “This is an attack on America because they hate us just as much…this is the reason that we have to unite around making sure our enemies do not hurt our friends.” Senator Lindsey Graham called for “coordinated effort between the United states and Israel to put Iran out of the oil business by destroy…
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…rotestant Women and the Consecration of Empire Gale L. Kenny NYU Press Feb, 2024 Indeed, racism and imperialism are such endemic features of conservative Protestantism that, all too often, historians and political analysts alike mistakenly position them in opposition to typically left-leaning ideals like secularism, feminism, and political and social liberalism more broadly. But to do so is to ignore how racism and imperialism actually influenced…
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…xt—and 10th—annual conference. Same place, same time, in Poland, in October 2024, but the importance of secrecy seems to be paramount for the IFTCC. Indeed, a recent newsletter to registered members warns: We would like to remind you, in order to ensure a safe and secure environment for everybody, the conference will be non-public and by invitation only. Please DO NOT post this information on any website, nor on social media. The new registration…
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