Religion Dispatches
…holic immigration and perceived Catholics as a dire threat to the American Republic, just as some Americans perceive Muslims in the 2016 electoral cycle. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests the ways in which, for some Americans, “Muslim” elides categories of both race and religion, and stirs up deep-rooted American tropes of the bounds of racial and religious habitation. The passing of Muhammad Ali calls to mind a period both of that surveillanc…
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…aree meant “Christian warrior” and that CCR stands for “Colonial Christian Republic.” “The Hutaree’s enemies,” the indictment continues, “include state and local law enforcement authorities deemed to be ‘foot soldiers’ of… the new World Order.” Of course, ‘foot soldiers for the New world Order’ does not help anyone understand that the Christian warriors of the Hutaree saw themselves as fighting an end-times battle with the agents of the Antichrist…
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…al gravity: a request for healing from HIV, a prayer for a decent boyfriend, a supplication for financial blessing, and, from a viewer in the Czech Republic, a prayer that “that all the Jewish people will know Jesus.”…
Read More…there, candidate Trump moved through the fairly customary laundry list of Republican talking points—school choice, Hillary’s emails, the secret plan to defeat ISIS, the need for a conservative to appoint the Scalia replacement, Hillary’s responsibility for North Korea’s nukes, and so on and on. By comparison with his summer addresses to campaign crowds, bent on attacking fire marshals and Gold Star mothers, sticking to the teleprompter appeared t…
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…ondly, how does this argument make sense in a country founded as a secular republic meant to maintain a sharp separation between church and state? Thirdly, whose god? I mean, what do you think the Christian nationalists are doing when they vote, if not putting God first as they understand this infinitely malleable figure? Voting Republican is a religious imperative for the White evangelicals I grew up among, because the GOP pursues policies that l…
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…ommunity self-sufficiency. Yet conservative ideologues associated with the Republican Party and with corporate interests have repeatedly been able to draw white religious voters into the electoral arena over hot-button social issues. It doesn’t seem to be the case that this works in reverse, however. That is, despite the best efforts of some within the Religion-Industrial Complex (see below), there is absolutely no sign that white evangelicals are…
Read More…se rights. But for now, we are here. We aren’t hiding. We are proud. Czech Republic: Court rules gays, lesbians in partnerships can adopt, but not as a couple The Constitutional Court on Tuesday overturned as discriminatory a law banning individual gays and lesbians in registered partnerships from adopting children; however, AP reports that “the ruling still does not allow lesbian and gay pairs to adopt children as a couple.” Israel: Profile of tr…
Read More…edom” around the world, and the stirring version of The Battle Hymn of the Republic included “as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free,” when the more common version these days calls on us to “live to make men free.” Yet even with regard to the way military force has been central to what it means to be American, the president presented a new narrative, asserting that “peace and lasting security do not mean we are in a state of perp…
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…that we document are orchestrated by far right groups and individuals who promote the political ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. Structurally, Hindutva is similar to other exclusionary ideologies, such as white Christian nationalism and Islamism. In India, proponents of Hindutva seek to transform the constitutionally secular republic into an ethnonationalist Hindu state that would privilege Hindus above other groups (especially Muslims…
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…ial dishes for offering to deities,” while modern varieties, the only kind promoted by the government, “are considered ‘impure’ for socio-cultural and religious ceremonies.” Faced with a soaring rate of Diabetes caused by the abandonment of traditional foods for “white” food products, the Tohono O’odham of the Sonora Desert have organized through communal institutions to support a return to their nearly extinct thousand-year-old former diet, write…
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