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The Religious Origins of Fake News and ‘Alternative Facts’

By Christopher Douglas

…ogically fundamentalist Christians have for years explained to themselves that what seems to be worldly wisdom and conclusions are really the results of conspiracies, biases, and misplaced human pride in academic, scientific, and journalist communities. This cognitive training to reject expert knowledge and to seek alternative, more amenable explanations has helped disarm the capacity for critical thinking and analysis. In the following years, the…

Religious Freedom Battle Is Far From Over: Here’s What to Look for in 2019

By Patrick Hornbeck

…pinion politely tweaked the president’s tail, and Justice Kennedy fretted that “[a]n anxious world must know that our Government remains committed always to the liberties the Constitution seeks to preserve and protect.” Justice Sotomayor was more blunt. She referred back to Masterpiece Cakeshop, which the court had handed down just three weeks earlier. Whereas in that case, “a state civil rights commission was found to have acted without ‘the neut…

Democratic Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Makes Faith 101 Misstep

By Daniel Schultz

…ous left, you have not been paying attention. I wish Joy Behar understood that, but it’s not surprising that she doesn’t. Buttigieg could and should have reminded her of people like William Barber, Jim Wallis, or many of the other well-known lights of the movement. The anti-racism activist Rob Lee was even on The View last year. Obviously, the conversation with Buttigieg was around presidents or presidential candidates. But then why not mention Ba…

Religious Discrimination and the Violence Against Women Act

By Sarah Posner

…2007 OLC memo. As the coalition letter notes, it is difficult to imagine that RFRA envisions that requiring federally-funded, faith-based organizations to comply with anti-discrimination laws is a “substantial burden” on their religious practice. DOJ will grant these exemptions based on nothing but a self-certification that while the organization will not discriminate against beneficiaries, it feels it must hire only co-religionists because it “s…

Angels & Demons: America’s Preeminent Pop Theologian Takes on Religion and Science

By Nathan Schneider

…good story loaded with hooey and nonsense.” Of course, he only has to say that because it’s not true. Everybody knows that despite getting most of his facts wrong, Dan Brown is American culture’s preeminent religious thinker and, in particular, our most trusted interpreter of Catholicism. Even though the Vatican decided to play it cool and say the movie is okay, the New York Times’ novice conservative pundit Ross Douthat took it as an occasion to…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am. It is how I live my life. The principles of Humanism guide me through life’s challenges and provide me with a sense of purpose to experience life to its fullest. Atheism does neither.” Those who might think that Bradley’s insistence on claiming the designation is so much stridently irreligious, semantic quibbling mi…

Stephen Broden, Beck’s Black Robed Regiment In Action

By Sarah Posner

…ation was built upon.” Broden also appears in Maafa 21, a propaganda film that claims that reproductive rights are a conspiracy to commit “black genocide.” The film has been promoted by the Frederick Douglass Foundation, which describes itself as a a Christian organization. (It also supports Allen West, running for Congress in Florida, who writes for a south Florida biker magazine, in which he has written that “the upcoming election is the time to…

A Real-Life Truman Show?

By Lauri Lebo

…d God to continue to bestow his bountiful blessings on the children and their families. Later, I learned that filmed near here was The Truman Show, a movie in which the protagonist (played by Jim Carrey) spends his life not realizing that everything around him is just a carefully crafted illusion and that his entire world exists in a bubble visible from outer space. Truman only learns about the real world when a camera comes crashing from the sky,…

Museum of (In)tolerance for Divided City

By Shalom Goldman

…at the city needs. And as for calling it “a Center for the Human Dignity”—what could be wrong with that? The Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance is named for Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Founded in 1993 by Marvin Hier, an Orthodox Rabbi ordained at New Yeshiva University, the museum has been immensely successful. Well-funded and well-known, the museum attracts over a quarter of a million visitors a year. Rabbi Hier has forged ties with many influenti…

Glenn Beck’s ‘Social Justice’ Heresies

By Sarah Posner

…m and authoritarianism. In the hall of mirrors that houses Beck’s history that means that social justice=fascism. Conservatives face a serious challenge from Beck, however: as the panelists at the social justice session at the Freedom Federation Summit admitted, millenial evangelicals are interested in helping the poor, and not as interested in combatting gay marriage. But if they believe from Beck that Jesus’ exhortations to help the poor are act…