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America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…

Evolution Sunday: Pastors Celebrate Darwin

By Lauri Lebo

…their assault on teaching evolution in science class. Zimmerman thinks the best way to change this mindset is for scientists to step back from the debate and hand the reins over to religious leaders. This Feb. 12 will be Darwin’s 200th birthday. Three days later, as part of Evolution Sunday, a holiday Zimmerman created, pastors around the world will be speaking from the pulpit about Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of the world. Zimmerma…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…t.” It’s clear in the song that Pigpen’s search for a viable number is, at best, a futile proposition. Still he dials the telephone operator to try find that lost landline. Problem is, he’s not even sure which direction she went. “I think she’s somewhere down south, down about Baton Rouge,” Pigpen begins, but then changes his mind. “She could be hangin’ round the steel mill, working in a house of blue lights, riding a getaway bus out of Portland.”…

Replacing Godless Hollywood with Bible-Based “Cultural Dominion”

By Julie Ingersoll

…lterous violations against one’s current or future spouse. Last year, the “Best Feature” winner was Fireproof, starring Cameron, whose work in that film and the Left Behind movies (as well as in the much-ridiculed videos with Ray Comfort on how bananas prove evolution wrong) have earned him the admiration of conservative evangelicals. Illustrating the wide-ranging influence of these Reconstructionist-inspired films, and the lack of mainstream noti…

Huckabee Teams Up with Citizens United to Promote Fetal Personhood

By Sarah Posner

…Parenthood’s budget, and that abortion is “certainly not a money-maker. At best, it’s a break-even.” Regarding fetal pain, the film discusses at great length a notorious 1999 picture taken by the photographer Michael Clancy which Clancy maintains shows a fetus, at 21 weeks of gestation, reaching out of the womb to grasp the finger of a surgeon performing an experimental surgery to repair spinal bifida. The photograph, Clancy says, has been used in…

The Sacred and the Dead: I Love You More than Words Can Tell

By David Vanderveen

…knees and stop, drop and roll roll roll out of that broke-down palace. The best thing I got from Wheaton was lifelong friends—and finding a place to live in community, doing life, raising our families, becoming more fully ourselves as the years pass. Together. Mark grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., and after college, returned there to start his own family. One of the many things he taught me was the importance of place. Where you choose to live mat…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…niverse something of which Krieger, again, in that deep American tradition best personified by Herman Melville, remains suspicious of—which is to say armed against. War in the name of faith is a recurring theme, as with cell-phone videos of beheadings. Krieger reads such rage within a dichotomy of “fundamentalist repression” and its opposite, freedom. Alhough she prefers the phrase “over-pervy libertinism” as, for her, the dichotomy is spread wide…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…That is a powerful lesson for all of us, religious or not. Faith is at its best when it helps people be better people, whether in terms of kindness, or humility, or following their dreams, or any number of other positive values—just as it’s at its worst when it takes agency away. The particular myths that Tebow or Lin happen to believe in are secondary (and of course, I mean ‘myths’ in the sophisticated sense of stories that give meaning to human…

Meet the New Haggards—Same as the Old Haggards?

By Kathryn Joyce

…k that way because he taught the scriptures that homosexuality isn’t God’s best for us. But I always have to throw in that we also teach that God is understanding of our human condition and it’s no different than someone who struggles in other areas of our life: like pride, in my case, I think that’s something that I have to struggle with. The scriptures say we’ve all sinned and are all short of the glory of God. So in that context, that’s how we…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…chief legislative analyst at American Atheists told RD. “These efforts are best understood as a loosely affiliated network of Christian nationalist lawmakers and activists using these resources to take advantage of every opening to promote their harmful agenda.” The ongoing exposure and response to Project Blitz has taught us several things. First, that it’s possible to stand up to and prevail against anti-democratic movements and measures, and th…