Religion Dispatches
Now that the hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin’s book tour has somewhat subsided, it’s time to figure out just what’s so important about it. Only a few glimmers of reality have surrounded the coverage. For my money, Max Blumenthal, Saturday Night live, and Levi have it all figured out—and Billy Graham has allowed himself to be co-opted. Simply put, many people, conservative and liberal alike, have underestimated Sarah Palin. She is a one woman wreck…
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Focus on the Family is accusing Google of giving its gay and lesbian employees special treatment. The information giant announced a new policy that will compensate its gay and lesbian employees for the federal taxes they must pay on when they take advantage of domestic partner health benefits. The perk, however, hasn’t been extended to unmarried heterosexual couples on the payroll, though, for obvious reasons, because heterosexuals “have the opti…
Read MoreI just love stories about young people taking a stand for justice. Not much else gets the tears flowing for me more than a good story about some little kid figuring out that civil liberties is a guarantee in the Constitution that should apply to everyone, so if somebody’s suffering from bigotry or discrimination, then, gosh darn it, that kid’s going to do something about it. How can any American reading such stories not feel a little proud rush…
Read MoreIn case you missed all of the witty headlines, Jesus was struck by lightning and burned to the ground this week. But despite the $700,000 in damages, the Solid Rock Church vows to rebuild “Touchdown Jesus.” Meanwhile, in the wake of his recent scandal, Tim Wilson at Killing the Buddha outlines how the Church of Tiger Woods is also burning to the ground. Baptists are using their presences in the military to oppose the repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tel…
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The results of an online survey published in the latest issue of Skeptic Magazine show that atheists in America fear paying a high social price in coming out as a non-believer. “The Stigma of Being an Atheist: An Empirical Study on the New Atheist Movement and its Consequences,” written by Tom Arcaro, was based on the results of 8,200 people who identify as atheists or non-believers in God. The survey, “Coming Out as an Atheist,” was posted live…
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The arrest of the Michigan-based Hutaree Militia has drawn worldwide attention, and in so doing surfaced one of the knottiest issues we face as a culture to which religious freedom and free speech are so central: How do we think about and describe religiously-motivated violence? The Hutaree’s plans to murder a police officer and use IEDs to attack the funeral procession in order to catalyze an uprising against the federal government was shocking…
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I have recently fallen victim to a new mental illness: Post-Avatar Ecological Depressive Disorder (PAEDD). Don’t try to look for it in the DSM-IV; that book is full of imaginary pathologies. This one is real. My symptoms include hissing at cars, wishing I were twelve feet tall and blue, feeling a painfully nostalgic yearning to “return” to the magical world of Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s latest film Avatar, and simply wanting to die as I…
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In 2010, after televangelist Pat Robertson made one of his many notorious comments to appeal to his base and rile up his haters, I wrote a piece for RD to contextualize it. In this case the comment was a flagrantly racist response to a tragic hurricane in Haiti, which he called a punishment from God for Satanism—the same episode that Chrissy Stroop ranked as number one on her own top 10 list, and a worthy contender, no doubt! But since Robertson…
Read MoreMy favorite new website is All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay. It’s a simple game: enter the name of a dead Mormon, or the site will choose one for you, and with the click of a mouse, the deceased LDS member is instantly converted to homosexuality. Of course, this makes no sense, and is somewhat offensive. But then, so are the views of some (though not all) Mormons that the dead can be posthumously baptized – or at least given the offer of baptism (whi…
Read MoreA new website, and a new robocall in Ohio, is claiming that Christians and Jews are against Mitt Romney and for Rick Santorum, mostly because Romney is for your kid’s male teacher wearing a dress and heels to school, and Santorum is for “social sanity.” Here’s the text of the robocall, via the website JewsandChristianstogether.org: Hi, my name is Brian Camenker; I’m a Jew from Massachusetts. And, this is Darcy Brandon; I’m a Christian from Califo…
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