Religion Dispatches
…a’s long national history with sexualized bondage in the form of 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….
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…history and presenting an inaccurate view of America—including the notion that this nation was based on Christian principles and that the founding fathers didn’t intend for there to be separation of church and state. The new standards serve as publishing guidelines for writers of textbooks, and Texas is the second largest bulk purchaser of textbooks in the country. But how far publishers will go to sell books in such a lucrative market is a matter…
Read More…kered past with keeping the faith. He keeps it now (or so they think) and that’s all that matters. Salvation is the only required redemption. Testimony above deeds. That’s why the hypocrisy argument — that Paul now professes to be such a committed Christian that everyone should follow Christianity instead of civil law, so why did he mock Christianity in early adulthood? — doesn’t work, with social conservatives, at least. Of course Kentucky is a d…
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…friends, who urged her to go to the police, or her priest, and recognize that what had happened to her was rape. To Jeb Barrett, Denver Director of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a peer counseling group that Birge turned to after the attack, her story follows classic lines of abuse of authority. “There are many cases where very charismatic men develop very close and controlling relationships with the people given to the…
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…Forum founders. This move is all part of an ongoing broader strategy, one that the LFF, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, has been behind since the beginning. Darrell White also told the Advocate that the textbooks don’t comply with the anti-evolution law known as the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” which the Family Forum helped write and successfully lobbied for in 2008. The LSEA instructs educators to promote “critical thinking sk…
Read MoreIn a case that may have wide-reaching influence, the Supreme Court of British Columbia today opened deliberations in a constitutional reference case to determine whether a small group of fundamentalist Mormons living in a remote B.C. community called Bountiful may practice religiously-motivated plural marriage without fear of prosecution or conviction. Before a courtroom packed with legal experts, scholars, civil libertarians, and child rights ad…
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…fetime of good works and active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks…
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…based healing practices, but contemporary research points increasingly to what we might call the deep semiotics of health. It seems, minimally, that hope helps to heal. And ritualized hope in groups heals more effectively. Recognizing the Signs and Symbols of Health Semiotics, of course, is the study of signs and symbols, but it really has nothing to do with the fictional “symbologist” character played by Tom Hanks in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code…
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…ality to Nazism. There was, of course, no need to debate Catholics for Equality’s mission by mentioning Soros. The fact that NOM did speaks to an effort to deploy conservative tropes about who is or isn’t the “real” religious person, and to drop code that political adversaries betray God to support evil. But it was Gallagher who had the gall to call out Catholics for Equality in her prepared remarks. “There is still time to repent,” she said witho…
Read More…Bachmann, Tea Party religious right heroine, wants to run for president. That would mean that, despite some talk from Mitch Daniels about a “truce” in the “culture wars,” that the Republican presidential primary field will be crowded with candidates who want to talk about God, the Christian nation, the divinity of the Constitution, and “Judeo-Christian values.” The field will be heavy with hardcore culture warriors: aside from Bachmann, Sarah Pal…
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