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Values Voters Summit: Preaching Wins the Morning

…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…

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One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Religion and the Obama Campaign

…s with eloquence and power. The second is that “being like us” is indeed a code for race, that being like us involves being white and Protestant and thus if one is not white, but “merely” mixed, then one somehow can’t really be Christian. It is more than a little sad that mainline Christians are not speaking more forcefully and with outrage against either of these scarcely-veiled, noxious beliefs. And it is the apparent net of beliefs that may wel…

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Leave Your Stereotypes at the Door: 10Q on “Keeping it Halal”

…? Why? In addition to Mitch Duneier’s Sidewalk, I would say Eli Anderson’s Code of the Street. It’s such a wonderful example of using the ethnographic method to dig beneath common stereotypes and reveal the social dynamics underlying a supposedly well-understood phenomenon. In his case, he’s looking at the situation of inner-city violence among young African American men. By carefully observing, listening, documenting, and then analyzing, he is ab…

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This is No Ordinary Anti-Blackness — The Racist History of the Pet-Eating Conspiracy

…rity and elicit support from the ancestors and spirits in the struggle for freedom. This liberatory Vodou ceremony has been referred to by Pat Robertson as a “pact with the devil,” which he outrageously blamed for the nation’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake of 2010. The only successful slave revolt in the Western hemisphere produced a proud Black republic—the first in the West to abolish slavery at its founding—and yet, for Haiti “freedom came at a pric…

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Israeli Right Demonizes Israeli Left, With American Money

…lear of causes, issues, or ideas that would place them in the progressive (code name for lefty-socialist) camp. In the meantime, the legacy media has muzzled itself, likewise fearful of the right’s blanket criticism of the “liberal press.” (For more on this see David Domke’s study of the post 9/11 press: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Echoing Press.) Returning to the initial question: why have American new…

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Lost and Found: Despite the Hope, Morality, and Meaning Inspired by Deconversion, Why is Respect Only For Those Who Find God?

…First, Douthat warns of encroaching “scientism” which, in this context, is code for failing to believe the supernatural truth claims of Christianity. Second, paradoxically, Douthat perceives a tendency among non-religious people to embrace the mystical belief systems that he himself rejects, like astrology or wellness. (So much for scientism!) Yet we don’t see any actual evidence that these trends are as widespread among the deconverted as he sugg…

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Tennessee Anti-Evolution Update

…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…

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Religious Discrimination and the Violence Against Women Act

…tatutory protections against religious discrimination or to create a broad free exercise right to receive government grants without complying with applicable regulations that protect taxpayers.” Last year, civil liberties groups lobbied hard to have a non-discrimination provision included in VAWA. The resulting statutory language reads: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin…

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6 Reservations About U.S. Intervention in Libya

…I included the people of Libya in my prayers, that they be given strength, freedom, and protection from harm. And then, kind of, sort of, in the nick of time, France, Britain, and the United States obtained a Security Council resolution—forwarded for debate by Lebanon, whose government was formed by Hezbollah, a convenient ally this time—and began devastating Qaddafi’s forces before they could effect a likely mass slaughter in Benghazi. But the ti…

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Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

…d back in 2014, defended itself by invoking section 18 of the Human Rights code, which allows a religious group to restrict participation to the faithful. So while AA presents itself to the public as a “spiritual” program, distinguishing itself from “religious” groups, it nevertheless claimed “religious” legal status in order to protect itself. Although the definition of “religion” is generally assumed in common parlance, it is not in any sense ea…

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