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Of God, But Not God: A Methodist Minister Speaks About Church’s Refusal to Open Its Doors to LGBT

By Joel Pitney

…church have always stood up for civil rights. For example, when my dad and mom were moved to the Methodist Church in Wahiawa [Hawaii] in the late 1940s, the church-owned parsonage was in a section of town that Japanese-American people were not allowed to enter. It was right after World War II, and my parents refused to live in that house. They would only live in a house that was accessible to everyone in their church community. Wow. I didn’t know…

Dirty Money in the Appalachian Church: Six Years After Deadly Coal Mine Disaster, Where Are We Now?

By Michael J. Iafrate

…out of their pensions and health care packages, and the ongoing scourge of mountaintop removal mining that devastates the land, terrorizes nearby communities, and contaminates the water of anyone downstream?” Bishop Michael Bransfield and the Diocese Wheeling-Charleston have been reluctant to speak truthfully about one of the greatest causes of poverty and ecological wreckage in the region: the coal industry. The Bishop’s official statement on tha…

The Jihadi Revolution is Dead (But Bin Laden’s Death Didn’t Kill It)

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…le of sacred warfare has been an exciting and alluring image among a large number of mostly young and largely male Muslims around the world for over a decade. It is an image that was brought to dramatic attention by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and stimulated by the perception that US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were wars against Islam. This jihadi vision of sacred warfare was propagated by the internet, through postings on chat ro…

Pat Robertson’s Women Warriors Leading Spiritual Warfare In Zimbabwe

By Sarah Posner

…and gave us the power to act on his behalf,” she said, echoing one of the movement’s most controversial tenets, so controversial that critics call it heretical; that believers are “little gods.” Mpofu added, “for me that was the most exciting thing that I could discover about myself because then it means [that] as a son of God I have been given the power to stand in the feet of God and I can speak as God.” Women Warriors and Sarah Palin Henderson…

The Religious Right’s Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency

By Bill Berkowitz

…ny time during the day. Gun ownership is outlawed in eight states and “the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships.” Home schooling has been “severely restricted” thanks to the lobbying efforts of the National Education Association. Anonymous points out that although President Obama “expressed strong personal disapproval” of many of the Supreme Court decisions that have brought about these chang…

Fighting Demons, Raising the Dead, Taking Over the World

By Bruce Wilson

…re’s one little block of 20 million or so, explains Wagner, which includes Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He typically just ignores this block in his presentations, explains Wagner, because they’re “cultic.” The biggest megablock outside of the Catholic Church, and the fastest growing of all? The postdenominational block, 385 million strong by 2000. Wagner calls this block “neo-Apostolic.” It’s bigger now than in 2000, he says, and Wagner notes…

Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones

By Joseph Laycock

…ulation and warns that, “Armageddon can be prevented.” Whoever planned the monument in 1979 most likely imagined that Armageddon would take the form of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. “R.C. Christian” could not possibly have predicted the events referenced by the vandals, such as the attacks of September 11 or the election of Barack Obama. But Dice, and others like him, read the Guidestones much as they read the Book of Revelation: not as histo…

“Paleo” is More Than a Fad Diet: Boyd Eaton’s Plan to Return to Eden

By Michael Schulson

…ore interested in it in an ideological or academic way. I want to find out more and more about how people lived and how that relates to how we live now. To me it’s an intellectual exercise. It does seem to fit into these other intellectual currents, going back to the story of the Garden of Eden. What do we lose when we leave a lifestyle behind? What do we lose when things change suddenly? Hm. What do you think about that? Think about what? Are we…

Why David Brooks Doesn’t Get the Outrage Over AIG

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ose on the Left should be in dialogue. Brooks began by observing that what most modern economists share is an intense interest in human behavior, an interest in the complex psychological motives (and yes, the faith) that drive so many of our economic choices. In contemporary economic theory, according to Brooks, there are two dominant models of analysis: number crunching and social psychology. In short, Economics is either a subset of high-order M…

Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011

By Lauri Lebo

…lified in Ben Stein’s cynical piece of schlock Expelled. (My review of the movie is here.) In addition to Texas, another anti-evolution bill was also introduced this month in Florida. HB 1854 would require “a critical analysis” of the teaching of evolution in public schools. The bill is little different from legislation currently in committee in Tennessee, which says that educators may not be prohibited from “helping students understand, analyze…