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The Problem with Ayn Rand Isn’t Atheism

By Sarah Posner

…blicans’ budget-slashing. But at least Shuler’s not an atheist! At the AVN website touting the anti-Rand ad, AVN notes, “The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.” Will the AVN ad help Democrats? Last year, Sapp blamed Democratic losses in the midterm election on a failure to engage in faith outreach, a claim that Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute rebutted, by showing that not…

Dialogue or Demonization? Where Gays are Concerned, Focus on the Family Wants it Both Ways

By Cody J. Sanders

…mily has tempered their language about LGBT persons on the Day of Dialogue website, it only takes three clicks of the mouse to navigate directly from the Day of Dialogue site to the ADF “Marriage and the Family” page quoted above. This certainly doesn’t seem to be language conducive to genuine dialogue and does little to increase the credibility of the organizer’s newly visible anti-bullying stance. But it begs another question: What exactly are w…

Israel’s Chief Rabbis Say No to Christian Zionist Event

By Sarah Posner

…group for its support during the recent Gaza war.) According to the ICEJ’s website, the disputed prayer vigil “promises to be a highlight of our time in Jerusalem, as we devote our final morning to seeking the Lord together in prayer for our families, churches, and nations, as well as for Israel and the Middle East region.” American speakers at the five-day event include the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leade…

For Better or Worse: The Rise of the Professional Wedding Celebrant

By Carlos Wilton

…sts of loyalty, religious rings to kiss, nor do we require payment,” their website snarkily proclaims. True, you can get a Universal Life ordination for free by filling out a web form, but if you want an actual ordination certificate, suitable for framing, it will set you back $8.99. Unlike diploma mills, ordination mills like the Universal Life Church have long been immune from prosecution under fraud laws. The reason is the First Amendment to th…

Christian-Only Prayer Rally The Response Goes To Early Primary States

By Sarah Posner

…anuary don’t have some connection to the primary process. According to the website, the purpose of the rallies is “to call on Jesus on behalf of America, that He might hear our cry and that we would see a revolution of righteousness in this country.” The website states, “we will not rest until we see a righteous revolution awaken the church.” And, apparently, the presidential campaign. For some idea of what this means, see my account of Perry’s A…

Personhood Ohio Claims Bible Dictates Criminal Penalties for Abortion

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…like “regiment” and “brigade” for its local groups. On the Personhood Ohio website, meanwhile, there are implications that God’s curse resides upon Ohio as long as abortions happen there, and that “sooner or later, judgment will fall on a land that sheds innocent blood.” The director of Personhood Ohio is Dr. Patrick Johnston, who also founded the Association for Pro-Life Physicians and the Alliance to Reform Education Funding (a group of people w…

In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

By Junaid Jahangir

…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…

There’s No Business Like the Bible Business: 200 Years of the ABS

By Paul Harvey

…cts, images of a white dude who is supposed to be Jesus, and so on and on. Numbers appear through this book, sometimes with numbing frequency and volume. Thousands of Bibles in the early years of the ABS; tens of thousands some decades later; millions and millions through the course of the twentieth century. The numbers document the stunning capacity of the ABS to flood the zone with Scriptures. Through the book, the ABS accomplished exactly that…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…an’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no! It took another several years before I really understood that some people, perhaps most people,…

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…der dresses and ridiculously high-heeled shoes. They sipped from splits of cheap sparkling wine while their tuxedoed companions swilled the local brew, Budweiser—that, too, a faded American icon, sold off in 2008 to the Belgium-based multinational, InBev. No, of course, these were not the protesters who have begun to appear in more and more American cities, but keepers of the once-stable base of a certain version of the fabled American Dream: wedd…