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“Taking a Stand for Jesus” in the Public Schools

By Lauri Lebo

…ard, which ruled that the teaching of creationism in public school science class violated the Establishment Clause, was a test case of Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment Act.) The article includes this stunningly familiar quote from a board member: David Tate, the School Board member who brought up the matter at the board’s last meeting, said he would rather not see litigation, but added that the board gets sued on other matters. “We don’t want litiga…

Sex Miseducation: Prof Fired for Pushing Catholic ‘Natural Law’

By Janine Giordano Drake

…Catholic Thought, a collaboration of clergy and laity, has sponsored these classes for years. Classes offered at the university have existed alongside much more didactic classes in Catholic theology held at the Institute in the basement of the St. John’s Newman Center residence halls right on campus. In some respects, of course, this agreement to offer theology courses in a public university may be controversial. However, it was never funded from…

Will Hate Crime Laws Redeem Us All?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…otections, they certainly weren’t lobbying for religion to be removed as a class currently protected by hate crimes laws. You can bet that if anyone yelled anti-Christian slurs while assaulting or killing someone the religious right would be screaming for the maximum penalty available under their “special right” to hate crime protection. What puzzles me the most in all of this is the religious right’s insistence that they have some inalienable rig…

Evolution Challenged in ‘Textbook’ Case: As Goes Texas, So Goes the Nation

By Lauri Lebo

…standards that could very likely determine what your kid learns in biology class in the next decade. For more than a year, board members, led by McLeroy, a Young Earth Creationist, had been leading efforts to preserve wording in Texas’ science education standards that waters down the teaching of evolutionary theory: The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their stre…

Osama and Orientalism: Where Islamophobes Meet Al-Qaeda

By Hussein Rashid

…s not a Reformation we need, but a Renaissance, a rebirth of the scholarly class as arbiters of interpretation. Just as Abd al-Wahhab was condemned by his family (a family of scholars) for being outside the pale of Islam, so too is bin Laden. However, those calling for “Reform,” give no credit to the scholars, and thereby marginalize the best bulwark against the spread of his extremism. Clearly neo-Orientalism has a negative impact not only on the…

The Nation of Islam at the End of the Apocalyptic Age?

By Anna Clark

…d on which candidate presented themselves as most in touch with the middle class, few questioned the very idea of a middle; a class that, by definition, assumes the continued existence of the lower class. The Nation of Islam speaks to those sensitive to that void, whether or not those listeners buy into Nation theology and tactics. Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Vassar College, contends that while the Nation suppo…

The Most Forgotten Queer Folks in the US are Fighting Back Against a Powerful — and Publicly Funded — Group That Discriminates With Impunity

By Chrissy Stroop

…wish to violate the rules by discriminating against members of a protected class, that funding should simply be off-limits, whether we’re talking about adoption agencies, healthcare providers, or educational institutions. On a deeper level, however, there is very little daylight between the naive and sometimes hostile suggestion that queer kids “just shouldn’t be at Christian colleges and universities” and the patently absurd suggestion that we “j…

Police Violence is Baked in: Academy Training Encourages Racial Profiling and Emphasizes the Use of Violence

By Samantha J. Simon

…or example, they purposely paired him up with one of the top cadets in the class, who had undergone Navy SEAL training and weighed at least 70 pounds more than Adam, to fight in a mud pit. “I had spaghetti arms by the time we were done,” Adam recalled. Adam was not a good fit for policing because he did not engage in the kind of violence the institution demanded. Adam’s classmates who did make it through the academy were those who successfully ali…

Obama’s Pastor and the Politics of Patriotic Treason

By Jonathan L. Walton

…r. Wright’s appeal among interracial, progressive faith communities of all class levels. His excessive rhetoric that transmits unbridled passion, easily identified villains, and visions of divine retribution create a space for emotional release among those outraged by the seemingly ubiquitous nature of injustice. This is particularly true among middle-class African Americans in the south side of Chicago. For those who have played by the social rul…

The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…n will help parents to keep their children faithful. Given the statistical number of Nones among Millennials and Gen X and the seemingly unpreventable increase in those numbers, these children, like Emily, or the children of many homeschooling parents, will eventually encounter peers who are not religiously affiliated. Given the way technology works, they will also inevitably find a way to expose themselves to popular culture. And the question rem…