Religion Dispatches
I really do sympathize with Teresa MacBain. The Tallahassee, Florida United Methodist Church pastor has just recently come out. No, she’s not a lesbian. This is how she explained it to NPR recently: “I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday—when Sunday’s right around the corner—I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up…
Read More…me time off. Some interesting details, though, out of Virginia, Ohio, and Florida: Florida: 70% of white Jews, who comprised 5% of the electorate, voted for Obama. Another data point had all Jews, also 5% of the electorate, going for Obama over Romney 66-31%. 24% of the respondents were white evangelicals, and 78% of them voted for Romney. Romney is winning Catholics, 52-48%, but 62-38% among white Catholics. Ohio: In Ohio, exit pollsters did ask…
Read MoreA school prayer battle in northwest Florida that has spread to the state legislature is a hugely messy example of how the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses can so often pitted be against each other. The battle began in 2008 in the Santa Rosa school district, which came under fire after two students filed suit with the American Civil Liberties Union who said that “officials regularly promoted religion and led prayer at school events.” Ac…
Read More…easons’s standard: “I can do all things.” No one can do all things, as the Florida team discovered to its great dismay in the last regular season game when they were trounced by the currently number one ranked University of Alabama’s “Crimson Tide.” No one can do all things, and certainly faith in God does not guarantee victory, neither in battle nor on the gridiron. That is as central aspect of the Christian story—embodied in a “suffering servant…
Read More…cal conservative.” Then, Lewis maintained, when the candidates moved on to Florida, “Fox News reported that Huckabee wasn’t campaigning there.” Sean Hannity, she continued, “said it on his radio show and wouldn’t correct it” and it was an “outright lie.” “You could’ve made a case for election tampering,” she added. I haven’t, naturally, reviewed all of Fox News’ coverage of the Florida primary. But according to these women, the alleged snubbing of…
Read More…was a Presbyterian pastor who killed several staff members of a Pensacola, Florida clinic that performed abortions. Hill was convicted by the State of Florida, sentenced to the death penalty, and recently executed for his crime. Bray himself served prison time for a lesser offense, bombing several abortion-related clinics on the Eastern seaboard. Some years ago I interviewed Bray at his home in Bowie, Maryland [see Terror in the Mind of God, UC Pr…
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…ir multi-national, multi-racial and multi-ethnic character. That said, the numbers of nations and people that we mention are sourced solely on the claims of the groups themselves. We have no way to independently verify these numbers, so they should be used advisedly. Simply put, the global vision of the NAR is based on their understanding of the Great Commission text of Matthew 28:18-20, with an emphasis on “discipling nations” (28:19). Internatio…
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…andidate nominated by their party who happened to be an atheist.” Gallup’s numbers “were considerably more favorable for hypothetical candidates who happened to be black (94 percent), Jewish (92 percent), women (88 percent), Hispanic (87 percent), Mormon (72 percent) or homosexual (55 percent).” What’s going on here? It may be that among the groups included in the poll, only atheists consistently define themselves through negation. This may be una…
Read More…istian organization. (It also supports Allen West, running for Congress in Florida, who writes for a south Florida biker magazine, in which he has written that “the upcoming election is the time to get rid of ‘Barry Obongo,’ and asks readers to imagine having sex with [Democratic Congresswoman Debbie] Wasserman Schultz,” according to the Sun-Sentinel.) Broden represents not just the religious right, and not just the tea party, but the volatile tea…
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…u look down at the bottom, in the strip of Sun Belt states from Arizona to Florida, you’ll notice that many of them are much lighter than their northern counterparts. In the lightest of them—Arizona, New Mexico, Texas(!), and Florida—Democrats did much better than anticipated this year. That’s of course due to the rising presence of black and Hispanic voters in those states. But those same voters are significantly more religious than their white c…
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