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News Round-Up: State of the Christian Movie

By Gwynne Watkins

…specifically targeting people who listened to the Australian CCM group The Newsboys on Pandora. Here’s the video for the Newsboys’ 2011 song “God’s Not Dead,” which takes place on the day that scientists officially decide God does not exist. (Never mind that science can’t prove the non-existence of anything.) Are you familiar with this urban legend about a Christian student butting heads with an atheist professor? Then you basically know the plot…

Old Politics, New Bedfellows: The Olson/Boies Challenge to Prop. 8

By Jesse Lava

…conservative stool. (Please, no scatological humor.) We’ve got the moral crusaders, who are the ones trying to keep the queers apart. Then we’ve got the kill-’em-allers—the foreign policy neocons who haven’t the slightest interest in Constitutional or statutory limits to executive power. And finally there’s the gimme-gimme-gimme crowd, which ostensibly stands for fiscal restraint (a genuinely conservative principle), but recently has been more in…

World Congress of Families Meets, Seeks a New Dark Ages

By Gillian Kane

…s by the post-Mexican Revolution government to impose anticlerical laws. A New York Times review described the movie’s characters as “clear-cut saints and sinners.” Like the Cristeros fighting against the Mexican lay state, WCF members see their battle as one of religious freedom against an oppressive state bent on forcing them to reject their values and accept a secular, relativist one. While WCF participants make the case that they’re being deni…

Reality as Revelation: “Hail Caesar!” is the Coen Brothers’ Most Religious Movie Yet

By Elijah Siegler

…in the film Mannix acts as the suffering son to the unseen strict father (New York studio executive Max Schenk, another historical figure.) It is a typical Coen joke that the two characters laden with most religious symbolism are two out of the only three characters based on real people—perhaps that makes Herbert Marcuse the Holy Ghost? As Mannix takes on the sins of the world, or in this case, the studio backlot, he is tempted three times by a s…

Christian Conservatives Turn Off A Generation Of Voters (Or Maybe Not)

By Daniel Schultz

…e political dimensions of religion as being conservative, and that’s been true in America over the last 20-30 years, but that’s not been true in America historically….Progressives at their peril ignore the power of religious rhetoric and religious organization and religious motivation for making social change. Nor does disaffiliation mean, as is sometimes argued, that conservative Christians are winning the hearts and souls of the church over more…

From Elon to Elizabeth: The 7 Seals of the 2022 Apocalypse

By Mary Rambaran-Olm

…boys cried aloud with their salty White tears: “Why doest you woketh ones ruin our imaginary worlds?” Thus, the fifth seal was brokeneth. 6. Sun, Moon, and Stars: Jeremy Clarkson is a racist This year we saw The Sun, a British tabloid that most likely panders to half-sentient marshmallows, publish a racist-sexist diatribe by Jeremy Clarkson whose moon-sized ego is only rivaled by that of Trump’s. Clarkson’s lackluster curriculum vitae includes: j…

Does NIH Head Francis Collins Believe in Intelligent Design?

By Eric Reitan

…we have to suppose that moral heroes who risk their lives for others don’t live in a world where doing so is a bad bet in terms of their welfare. But to make it anything but a bad bet, we need God. Now you might think this argument and the variations offered since Kant’s time are failures. Many do. But if they fail, it has nothing to do with advances in science. And if they succeed, it isn’t because science has fallen short. In short, moral argume…

AIDS Progress is Paradoxical

By Susan Henking

…revention emphasize chastity instead. Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York, said doctors had an obligation to discourage the behavior patterns that can cause AIDS, saying an estimated 72 percent of AIDS victims in the United States contracted the virus from homosexual acts and 17 percent from drug use. “Sometimes I believe the greatest damage done to persons with AIDS is done by the dishonesty of those health care professionals who refuse…

Catholic ‘Soul-Searching’ as Ireland Votes on Marriage; Churches, American Activists Join Kenyan Anti-Gay Group’s ‘Family’ Confab; Indian Mom Seeks Spouse For Gay Son; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…thin the United Kingdom that does not recognize marriage equality, a judge ruled that the Christian-run Ashers bakery had violated anti-discrimination laws by refusing to bake a cake endorsing same-sex marriage. Scotland: Church of Scotland OK’s gay ministers in civil partnerships The Church of Scotland delegates voted overwhelmingly to allow congregations to ordain gay ministers who are in civil partnerships. “Supporters said it was time for the…

Why I’m Not Quite Sold on ‘Black Santa’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…exclusively depicted as white in the popular American imagination. In his BBC News piece, “Secret History of Black Santas,” Brian Wheeler uncovers a long tradition of depicting ol’ St. Nick as Black as far back as the turn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, rather than function as attempts at inclusion and diversity these early depictions were tainted by the practice of blackface and minstrelsy that relegated African Americans to grotesque stere…