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‘Religious Liberty’ and the Origins of the Evangelical Persecution Complex

By Randall J. Stephens

…sade fundraising letter, February 15, 1967. Spencer Library, University of Kansas, Wilcox Collection. **Billy James Hargis, Communist America . . . Must It Be? (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade, 1960), 97. See also issues of the Christian Crusade magazine from the early 1960s, and Hargis, Facts about Communism and Our Churches (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade, 1962). Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-communism in the South, 1948…

God May Weep For Church Sexual Abuse, But Bishop Chaput Prefers to Bark

By Anthea Butler

…will be more than a few bishops in the same predicament as Bishop Finn in Kansas City. For example, in Minneapolis, where prosecutors have brought criminal charges against the archdiocese for failure to protect children, three Bishops are involved, including Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has resigned amidst the allegations, along with Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché. On the flight back to Rome, Pope Francis was asked why he felt the need to offer con…

Republican Gomorrah Documents the Christian Right Takeover of the GOP

By Chip Berlet

…age of the reelection campaign of George W. Bush in What’s the Matter with Kansas? is praised by Blumenthal as “penetrating, refreshing, and even pathbreaking.” According to Blumenthal, however, it was “incomplete” because Frank failed to note that the “appeal of Bush’s born-again experience” was the way his “escape from freedom” resonated with Bush’s conservative evangelical supporters. Their “powerful emotional affinity” for candidate Bush thus…

Is the Francis Era Ending the Catholic Bishops’ Cozy Ties to the GOP?

By Patricia Miller

…e “progressive” Cupich against cultural warrior Cardinal Jospeh Naumann of Kansas City, a John Paul II bishop who is happy to use abortion to herd Catholics toward the GOP and who had signed on to right-wing conspiracy theories against the Girl Scouts and Catholic Relief Services. And in another indication that the flashpoints of the Francis era are causing a shift at the USCCB, the conference announced Wednesday that Father Thomas Weinandy has re…

Motivations of “God Hates Fags” Church’s Philosophy

By Lauri Lebo

…ace, and perseverance of the saints). Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a University of Kansas PhD candidate who has been conducting extensive dissertation research with the Phelps family since 2004, says Westboro members pay particular attention to unconditional election and limited atonement. “Those two together really mean a lot to them.” The doctrine of unconditional election states that there is nothing human beings can do to obtain salvation. The elect a…

100 Years Later, Just Weeks After OK Bans Critical Race Theory, the Tulsa Race Massacre is Still Marginal History

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…the Trail of Tears, the slave labor experience in the Territories, the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry that won the Battle of Honey Springs – to statehood, the immigration of free blacks into Oklahoma, and the all-black towns and Greenwood. It honors Buck C. Franklin (prominent black attorney and Dr. Franklin’s father) and other early Tulsa black leaders.” However, the Tulsa Race Massacre centennial commemoration falls against a racially ch…

The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

By Ira Chernus

…campaign’s strenuous effort to make the biracial son of a single mom from Kansas a symbol of “elitism” isn’t working very well. What is working is McCain’s focus on “experience” and on the realm of war, the military, and national security. That’s the one area where McCain consistently bests his opponent in the polls. It’s only his claim to experience on these issues that are keeping him competitive. That does not mean the voters prefer McCain’s w…

Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…that comprise the family/membership of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas have a knack for turning stomachs. Whether they’re brandishing signs at gay pride parades condemning gays and lesbians to hell or protesting the funerals of U.S. soldiers, they seem to be spreading rage and distaste wherever they appear. Now, the WBC folks are on the warpath in Washington State against the big guy himself – Santa Claus. Westboro Baptist Church has ju…

‘Exporting Garbage to the Nations’: Conservative Christian Rifts Spreading Like Cracked Glass

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…rnia, has vehemently opposed the modern resurgence of spiritual gifts, the Kansas City Prophets, the Third Wave, the Prosperity Gospel, etc. MacArthur epitomizes the fact that evangelicalism—and for that matter all of Protestantism—has always been divided. We’ve seen many schisms and many transformations in all of Christianity throughout history. While such changes are in some sense normal, this history doesn’t diminish the significance of the the…

Evolution Challenged in ‘Textbook’ Case: As Goes Texas, So Goes the Nation

By Lauri Lebo

…up to “liberals in black robes.” Roll back the clock to earlier battles—in Kansas, in Ohio, in Cobb County, Georgia, even 1989’s Edwards v. Aguillardin Louisiana—and the motives are always the same. People of fundamentalist faiths say they are only standing up for science. They deny that they are trying to lead a religious revolution. An Evolving Creationism But Don McLeroy says he has evolved. In January 2008, as I was reporting on the “strengths…