Religion Dispatches
…h Christian faith. You talked loud about giving more funding to religious (code-word Christian) organizations performing social services and backed it up with little real money. (David Kuo opened my eyes to this.) This is just one example of the way you wooed Christians with good rhetoric and failed to fulfill your promises. Using religious faith as a political tool is what history’s villians have done, and I am afraid you may be closer to that th…
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…es. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a big breakthrough for the pope to promote “responsible parenthood,” here’s Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the l…
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…ast on the CD version) also includes a picture of Bowie sketching the Kabbalistic Tree of Life on the floor.”6 Fascinatingly, the record also includes an achingly beautiful prayer of a song, “Word on a Wing”: Just because I believe don’t mean I don’t think as well Don’t have to question everything in heaven or hell… Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing And I’m trying hard to fit among your scheme of things It’s safer than a strange land,…
Read More…ions are suspect. Among the topics he mentioned: secularism, Islamic penal code, Muslim women’s rights, headscarf or burqa, and equality, it is interesting to note how many have to do directly with women or with gender identity and politics. He was concerned that using vaguely poetic or philosophical language might be seen as an attempt to mislead the readers. Otherwise, he should just stick to these button issues. Isn’t it curious that women are…
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…ne running through the world is between those committed to a liberal, pluralist future and those who seek an illiberal world in which Enlightenment ideas of personal liberty and autonomy are soundly defeated. In many historically and cultural Christian countries, this latter ideology has taken the form of Christian Nationalism. Contemporary Christian Nationalists (CCNs) are most certainly Christians; they’re part of a decidedly unique, and arguabl…
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…ive” the gay out of him. Russia: Report on Putin, the religious and nationalist right, and rise of ‘traditionalist international’ People For the American Way (where I am a senior fellow) published a report by journalist Casey Michel entitled “The Rise of the ‘Traditionalist International’: How the American Right Learned to Love Moscow in the Era of Trump.” The report examines two American constituencies that backed Donald Trump’s election and have…
Read More…other religious faiths, too.” (Like the Prime Minister using his office to promote his Christian faith.) But then Cameron reveals his politician’s circumspection, arguing on the one hand that advocates of “secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary n…
Read More…ed into the “founding principles,” “Judeo-Christian” foundation, and other code, but they did more. They wept; they told stories about soldiers and family members; they evoked imagery of mountains climbed and enemies vanquished. Mitt Romney, though? Not so much. Speaking directly after Pence, who since the inaugural Values Voters Summit in 2006, has always invoked the language of the religious right base, Romney was at a disadvantage. He was borin…
Read More…ic materialism” represented by evolution, and “reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” But now, it looks like the strategy has been expanded to fight a culture war over the interpretation of our nation’s history. Even though the Discovery Institute hasn’t been involved in the social studies boondoggle that has been taking place in Texas, the Board of Education ha…
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…code as “Obama doesn’t govern from a ‘Christian worldview.’ And you know what that means: he must be a secularist, or an Islamist, or some other enemy of Christianity and America, like a socialist or an environmentalist. Because someone who doesn’t have a ‘Christian worldview’ must have one of those other, anti-American, anti-Christian worldviews.”…
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