Religion Dispatches
…ad little awareness of international affairs and my exposure to the Middle East was quite limited. Nonetheless, I instinctively sensed that Saudi Arabia’s claim to being an “Islamic” state was decidedly tenuous, given what I instinctively understood about my faith. Later, as I grew older and learned of the state-sanctioned religious thuggery and vigilantism of the dreaded mutawa (and the equally outrageous ban on non-Islamic religious gatherings i…
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…the 30-year average. Gallup also reports some unsurprising relationships between creationist views and religious affiliation, education levels, and political views. Creationism is strongly correlated with church attendance (two-thirds of weekly churchgoers subscribe to the view). Creationism is negatively correlated with education level (it is endorsed by only 25% of postgraduates, but 52% of Americans with high school educations or less). Final…
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…tirely without reference to any specific religion—and I’d be happy to take bets on whether or not a Mike Pence prayer was Christian—it is utterly inappropriate. I mean, does anyone seriously think that Graham and George defended Pence assuming that it wasn’t an explicitly Christian prayer? Also, putting aside the fact that this godless liberal can only afford inexpensive wine, did Merritt stop to think about the relationship of the praying Pence i…
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…st, but a White nationalist cannot. This is because there’s a differential between a “homegrown violent extremist” and a “domestic violent extremist” within the Department of Homeland Security lexicon. A “homegrown violent extremist” acts under the influence or direction of a Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO, but a “domestic violent extremist” does not. In other words, a “homegrown violent extremist” is Muslim and a “domestic violent extremi…
Read More…e that’s how he wants to treat her. This isn’t a hypothetical: it happened between Salt Lake Tribune humorist Robert Kirby and Mormon blogger C. Jane Kendrick (aka Courtney Clark Kendrick) at the Sunstone Symposium in July. In response to Kirby’s column this week criticizing McKenna Denson, who is suing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over its role in an alleged attempted rape by a high-ranking church official, Kendrick posted on F…
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…ho trespass. The activists’ attorneys subsequently requested that they at least be able to present evidence concerning their religious motivations. The judge denied that motion too, at the end of the last business day before the trial was scheduled to get underway. The Plowshares trial is one of a handful of cases that have unfolded across the country in recent years that upend the conventional religious freedom narrative. Far more frequent have b…
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…tion” uttered out loud any longer. What one does hear, however, amounts to code for the same thing. Thus, R.J. Rushdoony’s still-influential ideas about forging a godly nation—a nation organized according to biblical law—take it pretty much for granted that godly social organization has whites on top. Rushdoony, who lived into the current century, condemned interracial marriage as “unequal yoking.” Un-dead David Barton, another hugely influential…
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…ghly a third have to do with LGBT people. “Religious freedom” has become a code-word for those looking to stymie LGBT equality. Any “threat” to marriage always seems to come from those hoping to access the institution, but never from heterosexuals (despite escalating rates of divorce, domestic violence, and infidelity in such unions). Defending “bathroom privacy” is a thinly veiled (and well-documented) scare-tactic used to demonize transgender pe…
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…turns twenty next year, and evangelicals (for whom “young adult” is often code for “single”) have been known to seek out Bible studies with “cute” guys and girls. But in a time of declining demographics, and an upswing in online dating, the popularity of such parishes appears almost as an act of defiance. According to the Pew Research Center, the Catholic share of the population has been dropping steadily and getting older. To make matters worse,…
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…t hurt somebody else… I believe freedom requires virtue. We have to be our better selves. And if we are not our better selves, then we are going to lose the free society.” But what does being one’s better self look like on an individual level? And to what extent should a pluralistic society define “virtue” in accordance with dominant faith traditions? “I have said before that homosexuality is not being our better selves,” Mero says. “But that is f…
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