Religion Dispatches
…a vocal right-wing fringe movement (like Farage’s UKIP) that has limited access to political power than to have a quieter right-wing fringe movement that, by taking over a mainstream party, actually has a shot at national office. I suspect Clinton and her campaign made a good bet. Better to face things head on than to pretend they don’t exist, especially when so much is on the line. But the issue remains thorny. Faced with new, muscular expressio…
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…Focus on the Family, the champion of family values, somebody that I might bet a hundred bucks is one of the five most influential evangelicals of the 20th century. What is his relationship to Paul Popenoe? Audrey Clare Farley: So Dobson went to work for Popenoe as his assistant, before he founded Focus on the Family in 1979. And so, as his assistant, he authors all kinds of publications, which were basically Popenoe’s ideas for a public audience….
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…n these pages that paranoia about the president being the Antichrist stood between Obama and winning over evangelicals, advances this argument again in the Times, noting that these apocalyptic views “could help define the 2012 presidential campaign.” Sutton provides a brief history of the apocalyptic fervor of American evangelicals, and its impact on our politics. But for Democrats pondering over how Obama can win reelection, I found this to be th…
Read More…The result, though, is it makes it easier to legally shoot people. Now, I bet you see where this is going. The column is so terrific it really needs to be read in its entirety. Seriously. Read it. But Argento does see a potential downside to the plan. Of course, some people may object because of all of that stuff in the Bible about caring for the poor and being your brother’s keeper and such. They may point to the Sermon on the Mount, in which Je…
Read More…: “Amen! I didn’t used to think so but I do now.” We’ve seen Cameron speak out against homosexuality and embrace the far right agenda by speaking at CPAC, but and it remains to be seen if he’ll embrace the rest of the “biblical worldview” promoted by Vision Forum and Christian Reconstruction: biblical patriarchy, eliminating public education, and any public assistance for the poor, etc. In any case I’ll bet that Monumental will be a contender for…
Read More…ious institutions such that they aren’t aware of the alternatives that are better aligned with their values. Whatever the reasons, it’s now evident that churches get one chance to get their message on LGBT treatment correct and that they get the message wrong at their own peril. While some celebrate the decline of religious affiliation in America, I think it would be deeply sad for those who wanted a church that delivered on its promises of inclus…
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…my Christian sensibilities, but—although there are significant differences between that situation and the current one—it would never have occurred to me to question a professor.) But the more I mulled it over, the more uncomfortable I became with my own instincts. A main reason for that discomfort is that, it seems clear from the reporting, López Prater is not a Muslim. Were this an intra-Muslim debate, the university would likely have had a harde…
Read More…express obsolete ideology? Or would blogging help the pope realize that some of his teachings are a wee bit outdated? What next, Pope Benedict on Facebook? If so, you can bet your mortgage that plenty of “good” Catholics will be editing their profiles before they ”friend His Holiness.”…
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…onse. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.” Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totall…
Read More…doctrines and policies. But that doesn’t mean that he “gets religion” any better than the rest of us who report from the pews at the back of the worship hall, or from all of the unauthorized places—homes, schools, street corners, campuses, government—where religion wields major power. A few weeks ago, Mattingly criticized RD for running my story on a recently-installed, openly-gay Mormon congregational leader in San Francisco. Get Religion insist…
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