Religion Dispatches
…sly is. If we still had a Democratic Congress, we’d have a much fairer tax code (plus better health care, plus a thousand other things). But okay, that’s me. When I look at vast movements in history—fascism, socialism, American capitalism—they arise out of contexts that were, themselves, created by lots of large-scale circular movements which are impossible to trace precisely. Who knows, perhaps the collective weight of Occupy-style consciousness-…
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…iberal arts education and to have their behavior heavily regulated. Though codes of conduct may vary, evangelical universities like ORU, Liberty University, and Regent University all prohibit students from using illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, wearing provocative clothing, and engaging in premarital and homosexual sex. Bob Jones University actually prohibited interracial dating up until 2001. Oral Roberts believed that the survival of his own…
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…certed “Zionist attack.” For those unclear that “Zionist” in some minds is code not for the problematically successful movement toward Jewish self-determination, but rather for the fabled machinations of the Elders of Zion, the speaker continued: “They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.” Babini has since denied ownership of these words (though the Guardian noted his leg…
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…ntracts to family friends; and how he ordered his staff to violate IRS tax code. Falwell’s been able to get away with such behavior partly because he doesn’t fear his board of trustees, which is essentially just a collection of close friends of the family. As noted above, Mark DeMoss, the one trustee who did speak up in disagreement of Falwell’s endorsement of Trump, was immediately removed from the board—a testament to Falwell’s Trumpian fragilit…
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…mythologies. Even without ever mentioning the words “Black” and “Haitian,” code words such as “immigrants,” “criminals,” and “illegal aliens” are indirect signifiers of Blacks, Haitians, Africans, and other targeted non-White groups. Such racecraft speaks to a peculiar devotion to America’s most treasured civil religion—Whiteness. It’s little more than a twenty-first-century performance of America’s long legacy of Black voter suppression that redu…
Read More…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…
Read More…dictates, and thus marks the boundaries of, American patriotism somewhere between everyday flag-bearing etiquette and pro-Bush rhetoric. That is, the concept of patriotism once symbolized in a myriad of ways, both deep and superficial, has come to signify a sort of “pro-Bush”-“onward Christian soldiers”-“take out the evildoers”-“John Wayne”-“God Bless America and nobody else”-“kiss our American ___ and to hell with the Constitution and any other…
Read More…to poke fun at Romney to sharpen those contrasts. And there’s no love lost between Huntsman and Romney, who are distant cousins. 8. And yet, there are undeniable similarities between the Huntsman and Romney, including the fact that both as governors launched health care plans they later disavowed. Does his early hemming and hawing about his own religion indicate a tendency to spin and squirm, or—even worse—flip and flop? It’s way too early to even…
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…’re now firmly in the territory of conspiracy and resentment. The division between “people like me and you” and “others” gets more specific as the song goes on. In the final verse, Anthony decries the “300 pound” people living on welfare. Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds It’s hard not to read “welfare” as code. Welfare has long been used in conservative circles as a dog whistl…
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…the opportunity to walk through Black Woman is God: Reprogramming that God Code with Oakland native Seneferu and to ask her about the artwork and the movement it means to inspire. _________ Anita Little: Can you tell me more about what led you to curate this unbelievable collection? Karen Seneferu: I’ve been fortunate enough to be in gallery spaces or museums where I was able to show my own artwork, but I was either the only black artist or the on…
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