Religion Dispatches
…rollers’ in action to Model T-lined Dayton streets) and notes from Science Service reporters Davis and Frank Thone (which she uncovered in the Smithsonian archives) and lets them do the talking. Refreshingly, there is no intellectual prattling and wandering here; the book’s about the people, the moment, the context. LaFollette and the Science Service notes and pictures tell the story from the perspective of these two men on the scene who eventuall…
Read More…tly higher rates than evangelicals. Second, while evangelicals may pay lip service to the ideal of more scientific collaboration, it is clear they expect scientists to “meet in the middle” on theologically challenging issues. Scientists must, for example, be open to the idea that certain events cannot be explained through experimentation and observation; that they are miraculous. Aghapour’s conclusion then, is that evangelicals are not actually th…
Read More…w law was to permit businesses, like caterers and photographers, to refuse service to same-sex couples. After Elane Photography case, in which a photographer in New Mexico was found liable under the state’s anti-discrimination law for refusing to provide services at a same-sex ceremony, states began to see efforts to pass laws like the one Indiana enacted last week: Compare Indiana’s newly minted RFRA to the one assessed by the court in New Mexico…
Read More…retary of Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who resigned after funneling one million dollars to his own National Fatherhood Initiative, paying reporters, and directing other grants to programs he oversaw). Rounding out Feminists for Life’s resume are its opposition to family planning, population control, and euthanasia; they frequently link abortion rights to child abuse and infanticide, urge pregnant colleg…
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…er to flourish their claims of political power. Yet in his years of public service prior to 2008, John McCain’s speeches are models of secular aridity. He doesn’t just occasionally speak of God or faith or America’s Christian promise; he never does. Indeed, John McCain does not like to talk about religion. “I’m unashamed and unembarrassed about my deep faith in God,” he has said, “But I do not obviously try to impose my views on others.” When pres…
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…which is communion at its heart. It doesn’t have to look like an Episcopal service — every Sunday being handed the wafer. Communion can look like an impromptu gathering around a table,sharing their lives together, or a food pantry. Even churches that don’t use the word sacrament, I think most of them practice these sacraments in some way. The kind of Christianity you describe in the book is a place where people are free to be who they are, wounds,…
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…RAs are created equal,” as Aaron Weaver wrote recently for a Religion News Service blog: “If [SB 101’s] conservative champions were truth tellers and not trading in deception trying to pretend the Indiana RFRA is the same as the federal RFRA, they’d acknowledge that the goal is not to restore a long-standing religious freedom standard, but to rig the process to better ensure a desired result — a result that most recognize as discrimination.” But h…
Read More…ions, and is based on financial information garnered from Internal Revenue Service Form 990. Financials weren’t the only thing Church & State took into account: It “also attempted to determine the influence organizations have on the larger political scene.” AU’s research indicates that a number of religious right organization are more than adequately prepared to wage many a culture war battle in the coming years—whether from inside or outside the…
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…ed by badge and bullets—symbols of the Blue—distort a commitment to public service and safety by conflating their professional and personal identities, often allowing the former to overwhelm, even displace the latter. Blueness superseded the officers’ Blackness, along with their professionalism, training, and commonsense. Unfair burdens and absurd expectations are placed on Black people in Blue to radically transform a system that sprouted out of…
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…Author Russ Baker shows, among other things, that Poppy Bush’s well-known service as a Navy pilot in World War II was also part of his work for Naval Intelligence. This set the stage for an astonishing double life participating in covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency throughout his career. The story of the reinvention of the religious identities of two presidents and their faith-based political strategy could be easily obscured am…
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