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The Hollowness of the Southern Baptists’ New Racism and Sexual Abuse Amendments

By Miguel A. De La Torre

…ive, but because of racial and immigration attitudes. Until the Convention deals with the reasons it mainly supports a president who finds the good among white nationalists, any anti-racist pronouncements made, regardless of how sincere and stirring they may be, remain duplicitous. But the Convention isn’t really interested in a true transformation. The Faustian bargain made for the sake of Supreme Court appointments trumps any assertions about ev…

Vandalism as Conversation-Starter

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ted song, “King Park,” by the post-hardcore punk band La Dispute. The song deals with the shooting death of a teen caught in a drive-by shooting in the King Park neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan and the subsequent suicide of one of the suspected shooters as police closed in on him where he was holed up in a local hotel. A postmodern dream vision, the song imagines the initial murder, the response by the community and police, and the theologi…

Scope Bacon, Twttr Hoaxes & Joel Osteen’s Big Reveal

By Deborah Whitehead

…e April Fool’s Day fun with elaborate pranks. Twitter announced, in a Wheel-of-Fortune-inspired joke, that it was launching a “two-tiered service” in which users would now have to buy their vowels. The “basic service,” Twttr, which includes only consonants, would usher in a “more efficient and ‘dense’ form of communication.” For $5 a month, users could purchase vowels too using the “premium” Twitter service (“y”s are free). “Hppy prl fl’s dy,” rea…

‘Hello, Trump Warriors!’ Little-Known Preachers and Rabble Rousers are the Unregulated Id of the Felon’s First Rally

By Jeff Sharlet

…s like Slenderman undercover. “It’ll break out in violence,” he says matter-of-factly, as if bloodshed were just tomorrow’s weather. Chris, in a bucket hat. But one of the first speakers, “television personality” Wayne Allyn Root, a Jewish convert to evangelicalism who hosts a show on Mike “My Pillow” Lindell’s network, disagrees. When he opened a Trump rally in 2018, he claimed that the White supremacist convicted of murdering protester Heather H…

Soccer and the Sublime in the Shadow of Apartheid

By Preston Davis

…ne of the things that make this quadrennial tournament religious is the tip-of-the-tongue experience you go through as an observer. The ineffable takes place before your eyes: 20 crisp, well-crafted passes to a swung cross to a divining header finish. The net ripples. Elation ensues for some; agony for the others. It is a brilliance that toys with physics, captivates the senses and provides purpose (if only momentarily), vanquishing concern for al…

Vatican Unhappy with Obama’s Ambassador Picks

By Frances Kissling

…en the Vatican and the US is likely to emerge this year which will mark the 15h Anniversary of the 1994 UN Conference on Population and Development where the Vatican faced stunning defeats as an international consensus was achieved on a new paradigm for reproductive health which placed women’s needs and rights front and center. While the Conference document was limited in that it fell short of recognizing the need for safe and legal abortion, it r…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ivist Named Family Ombudsman Adrian Bukovynsky, who has supported a Russian-style anti-gay “propaganda” law, has been named the cabinet’s Ombudsman on Family Matters. As President of the ‘Family’ Ukranian Charitable Fund, Bukovynsky took part in a 2013 press conference in support of a ban on pro-gay “propaganda.” At the press conference he said “gay culture leads to the destruction of the world, and therefore we uphold and reflect the views of the…

What if Courts Considered Sincerity of “Religious Freedom” Litigants?

By Kara Loewentheil

…tten about the Hitching Post’s lawsuit, and in particular the bizarre white-washing—or maybe Christian-washing—that is evident when one compares screen grabs of the company’s website only a few weeks ago with its current incarnation. It’s obvious why this troubles us on a practical, human level—it suggests that the apparently newfound commitment to officiating only cross-sex Christian marriages is really just a convenient mask for homophobia, and…

Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

By Gary Dorrien

…separated from its initial motives (all the while denying it), governed by its own mystique, projecting power merely because we have it. That’s where we are today. Now as much as ever, we need a self-consciously anti-imperial movement that seeks to scale back the military empire and opposes invading any more nations in the Middle East or Latin America or anywhere else….

Worse Than the Robber Barons

By Peter Laarman

…attribute superior achievement to superior breeding; but most sharp-elbowed 19th- and early 20th-century entrepreneurs didn’t take this any more seriously than they took the idea that their wealth was a mark of divine election. They knew that amassing wealth was simply a game they were particularly good at; they did not, for the most part, think of business success as a sign of God’s favor. Spookily pious Rockefeller, a little bit, and there were…