Religion Dispatches
…ose things. Thank you! I tried to be careful to not say that my way is the best way forward for anyone—atheist or not. Whenever someone decides they have discovered the best way and that other people should walk the same path, it’s a real turn-off. Atheist polemicists have done a lot to raise the visibility of atheists, but they haven’t made atheism all that attractive for many people and part of the reason why that is—fairly or unfairly—is that t…
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…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…
Read More…ct the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people who are doing their best to raise the children they have adopted. As someone who adopted a child, Cindy and I know better than most couples the amazing satisfaction that comes from providing love to an unwanted child. I believe a child is best raised by a mother and father because of the unique contributions that they make together to the development of a child.” McCain refused to rule out nom…
Read More…prevailing sense of early 21st century LDS institutional life is that the best way to deal with such anxieties is to push through them, and that the best expression of the faith is the projection of a sense of assurance as polished and attractive as the storefronts at City Creek Mall. That’s how most Mormons plan to walk through what may very well be a season of public relations nightmares, as Romney’s GOP candidacy brings even greater scrutiny t…
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…is the tool of innocence; so many of these armed men said, “the gun is the promotion of peace.” But it’s also simultaneously the transgression. That’s what the thrust of “Thy Rod” and the sexual innuendo of it means—the way that’s also the transgression of a White man who’s doing his best James Brown imitation. Because in that imagination, Blackness is a kind of sexuality, and Kunnemann possesses that potent sexual power in the same way that he cl…
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…eternal destiny.” Banana, Proof of God’s Existence Comfort is a man whose best-known evolutionary criticism is the banana (or “the atheist’s nightmare,” as he calls it), which he says proves God’s existence because of its intelligently-designed appearance. In an unintentionally funny video from 2006, he expounds on the brilliant design of the banana, as a most impressed Kirk Cameron looks on. That Comfort is so lacking in imagination that he can’…
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…k, former-DNC-chair Terry McAuliffe blasphemously didn’t know; Jim Wallis, best-selling author and activist who lambasts the religious right for its petty intolerance and the left for “not getting it”; and Joel Hunter, the Florida megachurch pastor who infamously turned down a stint as the president of the Christian Coalition, and author of A New Kind of Conservative. FIPL has taken a lead role in promoting the “broader agenda” of some of these ev…
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…quake in Haiti. As I will explain, I am not sure that attacking him is the best use of anyone’s time. Nevertheless he has provoked me to rank my top five things to remember about him—less as a direct response to his comments than as a way to cut though the media frenzy caused by the comments and to address wider issues raised by his career. Most people know that Robertson interpreted the quake in the context of Haitians who supposedly “swore a pac…
Read More…best policy, interest groups from both sides of the question will do their best to lobby them, which, as Goldstein points out, is a much more difficult proposition than twisting the arms of elected officials. But it’s difficult not to agree with Amanda Marcotte on this one: In a common sense world, there would be no controversy over including contraception in the slate of preventive services that the federal government will soon require insurance…
Read More…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…
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