Religion Dispatches
…ose either secretly or overtly a Taliban-like, religious, strict religious code upon all Americans, which is ridiculous.” Honor killings, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and other abuses are “un-Islamic,” he said, adding that there is “no debate among serious Muslim scholars about that.” As far as fear-mongering that that Muslims seek to supplant the Constitution with shari’ah, Khan noted, “there is room for individual religious pract…
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…torate, and encouraged them to download his voter mobilization app (the QR code for which was projected onto the Jumbotrons placed around the mall). This may have been the largest voter mobilization event this election season. Illustration in Mario Murillo’s essay, “The Daughter of Lies” Wallnau has been engaged in election mobilization all year, notably on The Courage Tour, which seeks to register and mobilize evangelicals in 19 key counties in n…
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…ovidential success derived from the nation’s fidelity to God’s unforgiving code. It is easy to be seduced by these beliefs into some very strange conclusions. Christianity, after all, is not Judaism, and the Christian religion begins with the assumption that it is not about nation-building or Kingdom-creation anymore. The “Kingdom of God” that Jesus preached is precisely not the Kingdom of Judah; it took the disciples quite some time to get this p…
Read More…d art trump writing. Hazel and Gus, who, like the author, are residents of Indianapolis, visit the “Funky Bones” sculpture, where children frolic upon enormous dry bones. On this, Green reflects: “To dance on the dead is not to dishonor them.” Green’s notion of religion goes well beyond institutional spaces: “I don’t think ministering requires a religious context,” he says. Here Green is aligned with those atheists who find beauty in God and the r…
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…ws prohibiting whites from marrying blacks, “Mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, “Mongolians,” “Malays,” or Filipinos. Twelve states forbade marriage to a “drunk” or a “mental defective.” A Washington state statute forbade marriage to any “drunkard, habitual criminal, epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded person, idiot or insane person,” or anyone with advanced tuberculosis or contagious venereal disease. Interestingly, these prohibitions applied…
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…the U.S. Constitution. Among those ready to contort themselves into Trump promotion machines at any cost is the right-wing Liberty Counsel, which describes itself as a Christian legal nonprofit, “dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Liberty Counsel is an anti-LGBT hate group, and a quick scan of the organization’s client roster reads like a who’s-who of elec…
Read More…e men from murdering women or to send a moral message. In the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law, only two groups are protected. A Catholic may incur automatic excommunication if he or she attempts to assassinate the Pope (you don’t even need to succeed, just trying is enough) or if one successfully procures an abortion. Only fetuses and popes are worthy of consideration. The rest of us are on our own. Perhaps most cruel in the Brazilian case is the f…
Read More…ious liberty.” Certainly, the religious right has made “religious liberty” code for “we reserve the right to discriminate against LGBT people with impunity,” but I think some businesses ought to have the right to deal with who they want to deal with. A photographer, or a baker, for example, should be able to serve who they please. If their refusal to serve an LGBT person (or anybody else for that matter) leads to a lawsuit or a boycott, that’s the…
Read More…s, listening to speeches at the League of Women Voters, demonstrating with Code Pink and Le Front Des Lesbiennes Radicales, and generally gathering with other women to no good end. Now, I actually was there when the original plot was hatched, funnily enough: It was back in 1973, at the Women’s Exchange tea room in Eugene, Oregon. (To the public, it was billed as a Missionary Society presentation.) We had just finished singing a song about the weav…
Read More…the day in 1954 when the “Johnson amendment” language was put into the tax code was the day that “changed America” and set the stage for bad Supreme Court decisions and everything else that has gone wrong since the 1960s. Pulpit Freedom Sunday participants agree to preach political sermons, send them to the IRS, and dare the agency to sue them. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund) has offered legal help to c…
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