Religion Dispatches
…s “weird.” The news set off a wave of speculation that weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an inter…
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…urn to the old paths.” He adds, “the Church needs to repent” and “begin to promote biblical manhood.” Of course, even the hardcore have to live in the marketplace of ideas. Jennifer Chancey has generated controversy with her views on women and voting. She told a newspaper during Matthew’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Alabama Public Service Commission that she thought that while husbands and wives should talk about it, women should submit the…
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…of essays explores the links between religion, culture, and GMOs. In their new book, Acceptable Genes: Religious Traditions and Genetically Modified Foods, Conrad G. Brunk and Harold Coward have compiled a unique set of religious, cultural, and indigenous perspectives on genetically modified foods. Many of us are aware of at least some of the ways biotechnology has invaded the supermarket. But dietary practice often intersects with religious faith…
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…43 days away, but many people, including myself, have already voted. In a new poll, Americans agreed that the seat should not be filled until after the election, including half of all Republicans. By taking part in a dishonest Republican power grab, the would-be justice admits that they are partisan and corruptible, not impartial and principled. Without doubt the next justice will decide whether the Democratic or Republican parties win at the Sup…
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…te and advance a conversation. Clarkson has previously written that Moore knew his defiant actions—whether in placing a 2.6-ton Ten Commandments statue inside a state courthouse or instructing probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples—would ultimately be overruled. But his insistence that he was on sound moral—and therefore legal—ground did indeed spark nationwide conversations about the very issues at the center of Moore’s…
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…If You See Someone Ugly-Looking, Don’t Judge ’Em Almost concurrently, the news broke on the first face transplant in America. Connie Culp, shot in the face five years ago by her husband, standing with shotgun a mere eight feet from her, appeared on the screen. Her new face, still a work in progress, is a grotesque image in no way resembling her earlier likeness, though a definite improvement over the face her husband left her with. Before the tra…
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…ion (See: Indiana, Arkansas, Mississippi) have changed the RFRA game. This new framework shifts RFRA’s intent from remedying an actual injury, to instead serve as an enforcement mechanism for the socially conservative understanding of law and, most crucially, sexual morality. (The question around what extent Congress should be legislating our bedroom behavior is another beast entirely.) This new, mutant form of “religious liberty” does indeed dese…
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…h deep within, are rare.” Someone Else’s Fear Far from spreading the “Good News” and attracting new converts, prolonged exposure to Rev. Fred Phelps’ interpretation of scripture turned at least one of his sons into an atheist. Nate Phelps is one of four children to flee their father’s madness; a path four grandchildren, so far, have followed. While growing up hiding my sexuality in Topeka 666 may have made me feel like the Antichrist, the stories…
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…policy fronts under special political leadership.” These facts are neither new nor news except, perhaps, inside the Beltway. “White evangelicals are the most likely to have social issue priorities,” Green explains. The way voters concerned about values lean in any specific election after weighing social and economic issues “may simply be differences in values prompted in large measure by campaigns where the GOP stresses morality with success and t…
Read More…ntrists” was about a “broader agenda” than the culture wars. They wanted a new president to address poverty, health care reform, and global warming. But it was clear, nonetheless, that these leaders and the constituency they supposedly represented still demanded that Democrats stop being so strident on abortion. By August, then, Democrats agreed to let Rick Warren be the arbiter of the candidates’ faith cred; Obama cringed at abortion questions an…
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