Religion Dispatches
…roy successfully included in the Texas’ science standards such creationist code as “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records.” Another amendment says students will: “analyze and evaluate the scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.” The wording could be used to justify the adoption of pro-intellig…
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…red to vote there.” Publishers Watching, But Are They Listening? While the code language in the science standards may be vague enough that perhaps writers like Miller can use them to their advantage, the social studies requirements are another story. Many warn that as goes Texas, so goes the nation, since publishers writing textbooks to adhere to Texas’ standards would sell the same or similar versions to other states as well. In response, People…
Read More…e made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. “If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion.” Here is the bill in its entirety: FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA: Section 1. Th…
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Just the other day, a friend forwarded me a mass-mailed promotion for Free Inquiry magazine (a publication in which, incidentally, I had an article published a couple of years ago). The brochure was emblazoned with the following warning: “If you wish to avoid spending eternity roasting in HELL, do not open and read this brochure.” Having no fear of hell, I opened it and fished for what my friend said would be inside: a note from Richard Dawkins e…
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…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…
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…s and satyagraha. Rejecting the claim that the Jewish tradition has always promoted a form of passive resistance in the face of oppression, Gandhi stated: The Jews, so far as I know, have never practiced nonviolence as an article of faith or even a deliberate policy. Indeed it is a stigma against them that their ancestors crucified Jesus. Are they not supposed to believe in ‘eye for an eye and tooth for tooth?’ Have they no violence in their heart…
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…eld said that “Gen. Boykin gave many in the field just the kind of warrior code they needed to fulfill their duties with moral passion.” In an extensive, and highly-documented, review of Mansfield’s Ten Tortured Words, Rodda, pointed out that the book was shot full of a series of historical errors and noted that “Mansfield makes David Barton, whose masterpiece of historical revisionism, Original Intent, is listed in the bibliography of Ten Torture…
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…dy for some serious War on Culture…er…culture war. So there’s Christian as code-word for ‘evangelical.’ Like when Republican politicians say it. And there’s Christian meaning Protestant, as opposed to Catholic. And there’s Christian the way a missionary might mean it, (as opposed to heathen?). And there are those “anonymous Christians,” or involuntary Christians…was that Rahner who devised that category? Does anyone outside of seminary or grad sch…
Read More…er judged a vehicle for courting the religious right in psalmic and hymnic code, Palin is delivering a very clear message to religion-savvy listeners, who hear in her call for “servant’s hearts” the message of twenty years’ worth of “complementarian” sermons, exhorting Christians to be “servant-leaders” and, among women, to view their highest calling in service to male leadership: willing helpmeets to their husbands’, fathers’ and pastors’ authori…
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…hing the sins of a lost city, some prescriptions in the Israelite holiness code, and the Apostle Paul on the consequences of pagan idolatry. Or so the passages read to me.) Calling out the numbers is not meant to start a conversation about what these biblical passages might mean—or about how different Christian communities have decided to determine the applied meaning of any verse in their version of the Bible. The verses are often cited in church…
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