Religion Dispatches
…election of Barack Obama is especially telling. The false message of this talk: “Real [read white] Americans should not have to accommodate their experiences of US citizenship to accommodate those other [read colored] peoples.” Honest Work, Grossly Undercompensated In many ways, Stockett’s representation of black women servants has affinities with Nolan Harmon’s statement about enslavement. Both are uncensored matter-of-fact assertions suggesting…
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…sacrament of marriage should be changed. Some people say that Jesus didn’t talk about homosexuality, and that’s technically true. But marriage is all through the Bible, and it’s not gender-neutral. . . . I don’t have all the answers on homosexuality. Fifty years from now, when we understand more what’s going on, we’ll look back and we’ll ask: How did we treat gay and lesbian people? Did they feel like we treated them the way Jesus might have? And…
Read More…uring the question and answer session, there was a discussion about how to talk about race; Edwards said that frequently progressives speak “in their own code,” which “sends people away” rather than “draw[ing] them in.” She added, “I want to make sure we’re using language to draw people in who share the same concerns about declining jobs and opportunity.” Edwards was reacting to someone in the audience bringing up the term “white privilege;” Edwar…
Read More…rticularly with conservative religious voters. While there’s been a lot of talk about how a viable frontrunner has yet to emerge (mirroring the talk at this time in 2007), Michael suggested that Rep. Ron Paul is polling pretty well — despite his views, as Julie has documented here, being at odds with the Republican Party establishment. Michael compared a possible Paul candidacy to Barry Goldwater’s in 1964, adding that out of Goldwater’s ashes ros…
Read More…y want to talk about Christianity, if they want to preach, if they want to talk about politics, they’re unable to do so. If they want to do it, they take a tremendous risk that they lose their tax-exempt status. All religious leaders should be able to freely express their thoughts and feelings on religious matters. From there, candidate Trump moved through the fairly customary laundry list of Republican talking points—school choice, Hillary’s emai…
Read More…zine reporter. And the truly unfortunate thing is that Huntsman’s slippery talk on Mormon identity may put him in bad a light as Mitt Romney, now infamous for his double-talk and “flip-flop” on healthcare. (Dana Milbank went so far as to compare Mitt to conjoined twins recently born in China. Ouch.) In dodging the question of Mormon identity, was Huntsman acting the part of the slippery and crowd-pleasing politician? Or was he trying to negotiate…
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…eves she should, regardless of what any pastor, elected official, or radio talk show host thinks. The woman determines and shapes her destiny; and, in another surprise to many, she may in fact have the support of her clergy. Religious leaders approach abortion in different ways. First are clergy, including myself and others from a wide array of denominations (Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, as well as clergy from the…
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…ng War Stories: Reflections of a Civil War Historian” (the full pdf of the talk is here). Faust’s talk addressed the irresistible attraction of war, the way that it has historically made participants and observers alike “touched with fire,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes said of his service in the Civil War: War and narrative in some sense create one another. War is not random, shapeless violence. Fighting is reconceived as war because of how humans wri…
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…how seamless the slide into tyranny can be. In this special roundtable we talk about the series with Nyasha Junior, Temple University Hebrew Bible professor and author of An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation, and RD senior correspondents, Patricia Miller, author of Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion in the Catholic Church and Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Seekers, Believers and Those In-Betw…
Read More…about politics. Politicians, yes, of both parties, no matter how much they talk about God and faith, have a penchant for wanting to win campaigns. Pertinent example: last month, the Times unearthed a debate prep memo Cruz prepared for then-candidate George W. Bush in 1999, in which he took a softer stance on immigration than he does today. Cruz told a Princeton alumni magazine the following year that “one of the reasons I was so eager to help Bush…
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