Religion Dispatches
…l-time minister but will retain my standing as an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and will continue to guest preach and teach as time allows. And my plan after serving as a Multnomah County Commissioner (be it for four years or eight) is to return full time to the church. As I said, the church has a vital role to play. Running for office is simply a different way for me to attempt to serve the community. How have people reacted to…
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…gether can defeat the liberal Democratic Party, to keep us divided and not united. Because we are the United States of America, and we are the conservative party under God. Trump’s connection to the “prosperity gospel,” and warm words about him by figures such as Joel Osteen, have been widely noted by a number of commentators. Burns himself, the owner of the NOW television network in South Carolina and pastor of the Harvest Praise and Worship Cent…
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…ively protecting the wall: the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the ACLU, American Atheists, the Center For Inquiry, the American Humanist Association, and others. The wall of separation is crumbling, though not from neglect. It’s being attacked. The Trump administration is rife with Christian nationalists attempting to rewrite the Constitution by revising American history and declare this…
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…d States as a whole, whether the majority of the citizens of Texas (or the United States) believe this narrative or not. On the day of the final vote, board member Cynthia Dunbar, opening the meeting in prayer, said as much when she prayed: “I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.” Dunbar was quite clear: only our citizens…
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…a, insists he is biblically-bound to resist complying with an order of the United States Supreme Court. Again, Ingersoll explains, that’s a Calvinist idea that was rejuvenated with Christian Reconstructionism in the 1960s, and it became incorporated in homeschooling and used by followers “in ways they might not even recognize.” This ideology is embedded in Johnson’s letter, which scoffs at the prospect of court clerks resigning in protest, as one…
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…Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, ‘I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’, should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. After an item has been blessed in divine service – palm leaves, linens used to dress or to wipe up at the altar, a metal chalice – and has rea…
Read More…te evangelical Protestants are the only major religious demographic in the United States for which a majority (61 percent) say that this change will be “mostly negative.” Relatedly, white evangelical Protestants are the only major religious group in the country in which a majority (57 percent) say that immigrants pose a threat to “traditional American customs and values.” White mainline Protestants and white Catholics fare only a tiny bit better,…
Read More…ndanger the lives of other Americans. This week, the 45th president of the United States pardoned Steven and Dwight Hammond. A statement issued on July 10th granted the Hammonds full clemency. There is no mention of Hammonds’ crimes—crimes that, were they committed by men of another race or religion, he would surely denounce as terrorism. Rather, the president calls the Hammonds’ sentences, which were handed down according to federal guidelines, “…
Read More…“to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States”. – Bigamy punishable by a $500 fine and imprisonment not exceeding five years. – All acts passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah “pertaining to polygamy and spiritual marriage” were annulled. What it did not do, however, was make the requirement of marriage being defined as one man and one woman as a condition for statehood for all states…
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…rs, with 61% of Republican respondents saying they supported declaring the United States a Christian nation. Christian nationalism is having a moment. Scholars and journalists are signaling its dangers in articles, op-eds, and books. Preachers and politicians are encouraging their flocks to take on the identity proudly as a way to blend their faith and politics. Yet, even if Christian nationalism has become part of common parlance over the last ha…
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