Religion Dispatches
…tion” uttered out loud any longer. What one does hear, however, amounts to code for the same thing. Thus, R.J. Rushdoony’s still-influential ideas about forging a godly nation—a nation organized according to biblical law—take it pretty much for granted that godly social organization has whites on top. Rushdoony, who lived into the current century, condemned interracial marriage as “unequal yoking.” Un-dead David Barton, another hugely influential…
Read More…slavery.) And what about secret paganistic societies with odd behind-closed-doors rituals? That too is classic Americana—just as American as the Freemasons. What really breaks the good Christian folks code of conduct is not engaging in questionable behavior but rather exposing the indiscretions of other good Christian folks, especially after they get established and powerful….
Read More…nce “same-sex attraction” or “same-gender attraction,” while adhering to a code of morality that forbids all sexual contact outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage. Others claim and openly affirm a gay identity while carefully negotiating a path to maintaining church activity and membership. All of these paths entail profound risks, costs, and consequences. All require a level of conscious deliberation on matters of sexuality and spirituality…
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…In 1954, Senator Lyndon Johnson presented an amendment to Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3), which was subsequently adopted by Congress. The amendment defined nonprofit tax-exempt entities—including churches—as those “which [do] not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” During the recent election cycle, the…
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…families in concrete ways. He’s talking about a “more family-friendly tax code.” He wants the government to pay people to procreate. It’s a “big government” Republicans can get behind—a “baby government.” Though women of childbearing age are the people Douthat wants to get busy getting pregnant, he doesn’t talk about women very much—or the social, physical, and financial costs women still pay for having kids. Douthat blames women without talking…
Read More…ed view of the shari’ah “threat,” saying that he opposed a shari’ah “legal code” but stopped short of a full-on endorsement of shari’ah law bans. (That said, Reed does indeed understand his audience, and its fears.) The composition of the Faith and Freedom panel led me to believe he might have been attempting if not a rapprochement, then at least some balance. Ironically enough, the panel followed one on alleged anti-evangelical bigotry, though fe…
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…act, they often fought over which politicians to support, what policies to promote, and where to draw the boundaries of conservatism. But at the end of the day, they all agreed that the best way to advance conservative politics was through conservative media. Contemporary conservative media personalities tend to draw pretty heavily on a God-and-Country ethos. Were these earlier figures overtly religious? Yes, but in different ways depending on the…
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…ing religious images as universal will help heal culture war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition. Frederick Clarkson: Thanks for hosting this discussion, Linell. I think these matters are integral to the functioning, the advance, and indeed the survival of Constitutional democracy. But I think that in order to give them the kind of attention they merit in light of the particular challenges of our time, we nee…
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…mise is that the guard-inmate relationship is always violent, so there’s a code of conduct that is enforced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three other inmates in my cell, i…
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…rly Fiorina said, government taxation and regulation crush growth. Her tax code is three pages long. In some contrast, T.R. thought government promotes growth by, among other things, regulating business. Cruz proposes a flat tax 10% so, he said, a millionaire doesn’t pay less than his secretary. Yet Lincoln found that his initial flat tax burdened the lower and middle classes far more than the rich, and he made it progressive. Cruz said his flat t…
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