Religion Dispatches
…On the eve of the Pope’s address to congress, RD Senior Correspondent Patti Miller spoke with NPR partner station KPCC about the effect on the culture wars of “[t]he most politicized pontiff in contemporary history.” https://soundcloud.com/religion-dispatches/papal-politics-how-pope-francis-stirs-the-culture-wars-in-dc…
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There is an old Hungarian Jewish proverb that says, “antisemitism is when gentiles hate Jews too much.” The underlying assumption, of course, is that the gentile always hates the Jew; antisemitism* is only when that hatred becomes overt. Most American Jews today may not quite believe that, but the assumption surfaces again when cases of Jew-hatred arise—and especially in the weaponizing of accusations of antisemitism. In a piercing essay on the c…
Read MoreSuhail Khan, a conservative Republican who served as a political appointee in the Bush administration and currently serves on the American Conservative Union board, calls the Fox News report asserting that the Congressional Muslim Staff Association poses a national security threat “anti-Muslim bigotry.” As I reported on Friday, the American Center for Law and Justice has jumped on the Fox report, amping up hysteria by calling for a Department of…
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For much of the last two decades, voices that are both progressive and religious have been like the “the Whos” in Dr. Seuss’ classic Horton Hears a Who, yelling “We are here! We are here! We are here!” just to be noticed. This is how Rev. Tim Ahrens described it in an interview I conducted with him last year about the founding of We Believe Ohio in 2005 (for the full interview see my forthcoming book Progressive & Religious). But in just a few sh…
Read MoreNow that the hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin’s book tour has somewhat subsided, it’s time to figure out just what’s so important about it. Only a few glimmers of reality have surrounded the coverage. For my money, Max Blumenthal, Saturday Night live, and Levi have it all figured out—and Billy Graham has allowed himself to be co-opted. Simply put, many people, conservative and liberal alike, have underestimated Sarah Palin. She is a one woman wreck…
Read MoreYesterday, Glenn Beck hosted his last show on Fox News, and the media coverage began in earnest to document his meteoric rise and decline since his first show in January 2009. Some breathe a sigh of relief that Beck will no longer reach millions of TV sets around the nation, while others will follow him to his paid-subscription internet show, Glenn Beck TV (GBTV, forthcoming in September). Much of the coverage relishes his decline into “extremism…
Read MoreMexico: Catholic bishops perform anti-marriage-equality exorcism At conservative journal First Things, intern Matthew Young contrasts the “weak” opposition from Irish church leaders to the marriage equality referendum with more robust statements from church officials in Mexico, where the courts are in the process of making marriage equality a reality nationwide: Statements from church officials in Mexico are markedly different than those from the…
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By now we’ve all seen the pictures, saturating our social media landscapes with their grotesque glee. The becostumed horde, thronging through the windows, up the stairways, politely abiding by the velvet red ropes, as they stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on Wednesday. We’ve been transfixed, appalled, heartbroken. Immediately, stories proliferated online about what was going on, interpretations of the root and proximate causes, alter…
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Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed around the world on Thursday to memorialize victims of violence against transgender people. Organizers report that at least 226 trans people were murdered in the past year, which almost certainly under-reports the actual figure. In the US, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported earlier this year that, based on data collected from 13 states and Puerto Rico, almost three-quarters of LGB…
Read MoreOn June 29, 2013, in heavily Christian Northern Florida, American Atheists will unveil the first public monument to atheism. A bench engraved with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Benjamin Franklin, and other atheists and freethinkers will be placed alongside a monument of the Ten Commandments on display in front of the Bradford County Courthouse. How did this come about? As reported by news4jax.com: American Atheists had sued…
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