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DeVos Literally Can’t Name a Discriminatory Policy She’d Refuse to Fund

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ion in public schools one of her top priorities in Congress,” according to Boston.com, grilled the education secretary about a Christian school in Indiana that has received more $665,000 in state voucher funds, while clearly stating that it will deny admission to any child whose family includes LGBT people. As a key architect and backer of Indiana’s uniquely sweeping “school choice” voucher program, DeVos may have already been familiar with Bloomi…

Secular End Times & Apocalyptic ‘Roosters’

By Gordon Haber

…es of the Millennial Experience, Richard Landes, a Professor of History at Boston University, presents a gutsy hypothesis: that many secular movements—the French Revolution, Marxism, Nazism—can be better understood as millennialist or apocalyptic. But before Landes investigates the movements themselves, he defines his terms—which, by his own admission, are “idiosyncratic.” By “millennium” he does not mean a specific date, like 2000 C.E. Instead he…

Is the Decline of Religion the Decline of Generosity?

By Peter Laarman

Last week a colleague made me aware of a recent Boston Globe column by Jeff Jacoby. That was a mischievous thing to do, as my colleague knew full well how I would react to the column’s bullshit premise. Jacoby claims to want to see the matter empirically, but it’s immediately clear he buys into the false assumption that declining religious affiliation will make the whole country worse off—that the rise of religiously unaffiliated “nones” marks th…

The Ryan Report on Child Abuse in Ireland

By Eugene C. Bianchi

…Ireland landed like a huge aftershock following the American quake felt in Boston a few years ago. In the US, court settlements for victims cost billions and have forced bankruptcy on dioceses and religious orders. Similar seismic activity threatens in the Los Angeles area where Cardinal Mahony and his lawyers are fighting lawsuits. Thomas P. Doyle, a Dominican priest and leading expert on clerical child abuse, has pointed out that the problem is…

Ann Romney’s Big Night at the RNC

By Joanna Brooks

…or one another. Romney gave plenty of service as a lay pastoral leader for Boston-area congregations. But, as Ann Romney explained, “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” (Tagg Romney made a similar point earlier in the day about how Mormons are taught not to brag about acts of interpersonal service. This is an important way the campaign is seeking to humanize…

COVID-19 is Concentrating Wealth Even Further; Can we Talk About the Surplus of Powerlessness in the Faith Community?

By Peter Laarman

…is week House Ways & Means Chair Richard Neal was interviewed at length on Boston’s main public radio station. Representing Western Massachusetts, Rep. Neal is without doubt one of the good guys among the senior members. He choked up when he mentioned that he has 90-year-old uncle, a second father to him, who is suffering from COVID in that hellhole of a soldier’s home in Holyoke. But when Rep. Neal was asked about who he and Speaker Pelosi and ot…

Abortion Provider George Tiller Murdered at Church

By Frances Kissling

…ork. Other murdered providers include two young clinic staff at Preterm in Boston, Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols, in 1994; Dr. John Britton in Pensacola, Florida in the same year; and Dr. David Gunn in 1993. The National Abortion Federation lists other physicians who have been shot and injured either at home or near their clinics between 1994 and 1997. These murders and shootings (as well as hundreds of incidences of fire bombings and violence…

Are the Culture Wars Over? Look at the States

By Sarah Posner

…pregnant out of wedlock could be summarily fired from her job,” writes Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Similar bills are pending in Arkansas, Kansas, Nevada, and Texas, according to Elise Helgesen, AU’s State Legislative Counsel. After the bill passed, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation put out a statement praising the veto override, and charging, “There is a concerted effort to di…

Colorado Springs Massacre Captures the Christian Nationalist ‘Monster In The Mirror’

By Lucas Kwong

…isease-bearing foreigner channels White British paranoia about the growing numbers of Eastern European Jews flocking to Britain’s shores from the 1870s onward. In the episode, I point out that Dracula—and vampires by extension—became the quintessential anti-Christian villain, not least because of how they echo conspiracy theories, circulating almost a decade before the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that powerful Jewish elites…

The Death of a Black Man at the Hands of Black Officers Unveiled Something More Complex Than Whiteness

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…nored violence known as chattel slavery. In fact, U.S. policing started in Boston to control poor Irish immigrants; in the South to maintain the slavocracy; and in the Midwest to intimidate Native Americans into a unique form of segregation. The anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-poor ethos of our policing keeps these histories alive on our streets as disempowered communities live vulnerable to what Achille Mbembe calls necropolitics. The death of M…