Religion Dispatches
…rk to comfort racist fears or desires. In fact, it does the opposite. It causes extreme discomfort because it disrupts previously held racial and gender guidelines and thus rules of engagement. And, because of this, both Obamas will now face the predictable wrath of the likes of Bill O’Reilly and others who have been just waiting for the “politically correct” opportunity to put them both in their “places”—that is, in the back of the social-cultura…
Read More…to poke fun at Romney to sharpen those contrasts. And there’s no love lost between Huntsman and Romney, who are distant cousins. 8. And yet, there are undeniable similarities between the Huntsman and Romney, including the fact that both as governors launched health care plans they later disavowed. Does his early hemming and hawing about his own religion indicate a tendency to spin and squirm, or—even worse—flip and flop? It’s way too early to even…
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…answer everything. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they are not actively promoting the use of “supplemental materials” like pro-intelligent design textbooks such as Pandas and People, used in Dover, and its follow-up, The Design of Life. Evangelicals may not realize it, but such an approach is a risky strategy. It’s not just bad science, it’s bad theology. Such dichotomy forces students to choose between faith and science. After Dover’s trial wa…
Read More…ably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it—or my observation of it—is temporary? Here it is, a cosmology for our times: a passive yet hopeful plea to a vast, personified universe. In the book, Hazel’s father credits this inspiration to a college professor. In interviews, Green credits it t…
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…like this. I’m interested in the opportunity of space for black women because black men tend to speak for the black community—whether it’s visual arts, literature or politics. They tend to speak for both genders. To some degree, Black Lives Matter is shifting that narrative because you have queer black women at the forefront that are really the voice of challenging authority and protecting black bodies. With this exhibition, I wanted a space for…
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…ry Institute has run away from a school board after members there actually used the word “creationism.” Because of his recent response in American Spectator to the Livingston Parish School Board, I compared Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman to Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin. As the song goes, “when danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.” Some folks at DI must have taken umbrage. But Mr. Klinghoffer also took ex…
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…thony Wiener). Their political fate was sealed, and negatively so, not because their sexual violations were considered particularly heinous, but because neither one built their political personas around threats of an impending national enemy. As a result, there’s no other way to talk about, or justify, or translate their wayward sexuality that can redeem them as strong, national protectors. With this in mind, what that photo exposed is far more th…
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…the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education, and even the supposed link between vaccinations and autism. One could make the argument that even issues that don’t appear to have any religious resonance at all—such as the efficacy of supply-side economic policies, or the idea that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and ties to Al Qaeda—are likewise successful partly because of this conservative cognitive training in the rejection of ma…
Read More…but that view hasn’t been shared even within their own communion. The SBC used to be marked by diversity in belief and practice, but now it marches ever closer to a rigid, centralized orthodoxy that would have been anathema to its founders. Mohler was and is part of the movement that created that situation. So likewise, this business of Southern Baptist conservatives being a threatened minority just trying to maintain its way of life is baloney….
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…taining favorable tax treatment from the state for advancing a religious cause? If I know Petra’s views as well as I think I do, I doubt that Justice Kennedy has won her over. Petra will argue that any tax subsidy for religion, in a closed system where the power to tax is limited, violates the non-establishment clause. Petra will also argue that the principle of taxpayer-supported universal public education is severely undercut if more and more ta…
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