Religion Dispatches
…ked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy.” https://www.instagram.com/p/CBA1P3gHpT_/?igshid=1qstwzxn87p2n I’m a pastor in the city that Drew Brees calls home and it’s from this perspective that I say Drew Brees’ comments were right. His comments were right not only because he spoke from his heart but because his comments, especially given the fact that they were made in the midst of everything that’s going on in our country, reveal what…
Read More
…the religious left that’s non-white, and/or not Christian. https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/1258950502089449472 I do have some small sympathy for Bruenig’s argument. After all, I too have said there’s not much of a religious left in the U.S. There really isn’t, if you mean a cohesive national movement advancing a unified policy agenda analogous to the Religious Right. That’s in fact why I never capitalize “religious left”: I don’t believe the…
Read More
…every demonic spirit” and “every covenant made with Satan.” https://twitter.com/i/status/1171803697292238853 Like some other fundamentalist supporters, White later attributed the President’s impeachment to “demonic schemes” and “demonic stirrings and manipulations”—literally demonizing the President’s political opposition. What was going on? https://twitter.com/paula_white/status/1207526347289038849 Readers of fundamentalist fiction knew what was…
Read More…nner on the second-story house which serves as the church, “GodhatesAmerica.com” and the vandalized garage door with painted over, but still visible, penis and scrotum. Phelps and his church of hate (they’d proudly agree with that description) are the defendants in Snyder v. Phelps, a First Amendment case that will be presented before the US Supreme Court in October. While most readers are no doubt familiar with Phelps and his brand of crazy, the…
Read More
…p%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1181395164499070976&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fculture%2F2019%2F10%2F9%2F20906371%2Fellen-degeneres-george-w-bush-controversy Jamil, baffled about the outcry, took to Twitter to defend her friend and admonish her audience that kindness was a virtue, and that DeGeneres had made “an incredibly necessary point” when she argued that we should be kind to those “who don’t share the same beliefs.” In fact, Jamil stated,…
Read More…extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth.” https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1100211495223218176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1100211495223218176&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F02%2F26%2Fhealth%2Fabortion-bill-trump.html However, his statement in Green Bay differs from the earlier statements which deliberately misconstrue laws in order to blame governmental officials for what could…
Read More
…p first in a Google search for Religious Freedom Day is ReligiousFreedomDay.com, the work of a California-based Christian right agency called Gateways to Better Education. This group is part of a wider movement that seeks to evangelize children in public schools—as detailed in Katherine Stewart’s book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. Gateways states that they work with such leading Christian right o…
Read More
…Evans’ tweet on the retirement of Justice Kennedy alleges: https://twitter.com/rachelheldevans/status/1012048093204942848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1012048093204942848&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fthe-fix%2Fwp%2F2018%2F06%2F28%2Fjustice-kennedys-retirement-is-what-evangelicals-were-banking-on-with-trump%2F This situation is highlighted by the case of Neil Gorsuch. Raised a Catholic, Gorsuch and…
Read More…tatus/1010497564435730434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2018%2F06%2F23%2Fpolitics%2Fmike-huckabee-ms13-pelosi%2Findex.html As many on social media pointed out, this is a classic dehumanization strategy—take a blameworthy sub-group like MS-13 and conflate them with a larger group, such as migrants coming from Mexico and other parts of Central and South America. This is part of a larger degeneration of our public sphere int…
Read More…ules for who within the group can deploy a moral principle. https://twitter.com/mschlapp/status/990937007286312960 The situation is asymmetrical in that one side generally sees mainstream, professional journalism as the referee calling the game, as it were, based on the ‘rules’ of objective facts and higher moral principles. But the other side has learned to ‘play the ref,’ and generally doesn’t see the ref as the source of either objective facts…
Read More