Religion Dispatches
Newt Gingrich seems to be getting his conservative Christian credentials all locked up. First, as Sarah Morice-Brubaker has pointed out, he signed the Personhood USA Pledge even though it is at odds with his own “pro-life” beliefs. Now, the twice-divorced and thrice-married former Congressman has signed the National Organization for Marriage’s pledge to defend “traditional” marriage and defend “religious liberty,” which is code for defending the…
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…ooled by Santorum’s defense that he believes Obama when the president says he’s a Christian. Listen to the world salad Santorum and Stewart dropped onto the national airwaves. Anyone steeped in the “Christian worldview” (including Stewart’s old boss Bachmann) would fully understand that 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 Christian…
Read More…ocument blueprint as it rewrites its textbook guidelines. The story in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday by Russell Shorto brilliantly laid out the history of members of TBOE and their attempt to hijack the education of America’s children with religious doctrine. It’s a must read for anyone who wants to understand the motivations of the Christian Right regarding the long-term goals for our education system, playing out now in Texas. As board m…
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…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…
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…ssure Congress to not to cut programs to the poor attracted the support of New York Times foodie Mark Bittman. He’s calling on the Obama administration to end the war in Afghanistan, a stance that would put him in the same camp as Code Pink or the editorial board of the Nation. As Presbyterian Pastor Katie Mulligan notes, though, writing in response to Sojourners’ rejection of the ad: “It is entirely possible to do good work in the world and at th…
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…art company. It is important to recall that Catholic anti-Modernism is not new; it too has a history. In fact, Catholic anti-Modernism is celebrating an ironic centennial. As Claus Arnold documents in his recent analysis of newly-released documents in the Vatican Secret Archives, the Church came only slowly to its current theological anti-Modernism (his essay, “Antimodernismo e magistero Romano: la redazione della Pascendi,” Rivista di storia del…
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…nd active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks Mr. Potter is the hero…
Read More…words, as Nones. The economists involved in this study focused on the zip code where a clergy sex scandal had occurred. They found a “large and statistically significant effect” on charitable contributions in those zip codes after a scandal, and not only to Catholic-based charitable organizations. The researchers theorize that perhaps once a person stops attending church, the social pressure to be charitable declines. Interestingly, however, thes…
Read More…d) will be free to focus on the crucial matter of the latest Dan “Da Vinci Code” Brown adaptation. As of this writing, we are still waiting for advance word on the subject of Obama’s graduation speech. As any professor can tell you, a college commencement address frequently falls into one of three genres. The first strives to inspire with insipid platitudes equal to the occasion. (“Your graduation is a change I can believe in.”) The second ignores…
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