Religion Dispatches
…h Christian faith. You talked loud about giving more funding to religious (code-word Christian) organizations performing social services and backed it up with little real money. (David Kuo opened my eyes to this.) This is just one example of the way you wooed Christians with good rhetoric and failed to fulfill your promises. Using religious faith as a political tool is what history’s villians have done, and I am afraid you may be closer to that th…
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…ow has it been different? I cannot remember a time when our music has been better at church. We’ve sung Amen Siakudumisa every single week as our prayer response. It’s a joyous piece by a South African composer of Sotho descent named Stephen Cuthbert Molefe. We’ve sung Savior God Above, set to Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday. We’ve sung songs from the Lakota, and from the United Church of the Philippines, and from Mexico and on and on. It’s truly bee…
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…eve?” is not up to the task of helping its viewers discern the differences between its movie-version of the world, and the world they live in. And that’s a big deal precisely because of the sort of movie it is. It’s not escapism or fantasy or documentary—that’s why criticisms about it being “preachy” are a little silly. It is, though, a movie pretty clearly intended to make Christians act a certain way toward the world they share with others. The…
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…roy successfully included in the Texas’ science standards such creationist code as “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records.” Another amendment says students will: “analyze and evaluate the scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.” The wording could be used to justify the adoption of pro-intellig…
Read More…er disputes percolating up through the lower courts will present the clash between anti-gay religious beliefs and LGBTQ rights much more clearly. Two cases are about to be heard by state supreme courts: one concerning wedding flowers in Washington and another about custom wedding invitations in Arizona. Is a cross always a cross? And other Establishment Clause matters If the logistics of same-sex weddings have created a steady flow of cases invoki…
Read More…on International Religious Freedom, said that the language was “a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion.” Moon’s UN project? Still in the hopper! To gain a better appreciation for Moon’s powerful political, religious, and economic empire, check out John Gorenfeld’s Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right,…
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…eocracy” and that the bills don’t “mimic or enact any particular religious code.” However, the inclusion of “The Ten Commandments Display Act” isn’t very convincing on that score. They further insist that the model bills promote “religious tolerance” and that they “do not force any religion on anyone,” yet the “National Motto Display Act” calls for the posting of the Christian religious slogan “In God We Trust” in public schools and buildings. And…
Read More…ena. On Easter Sunday, an 11-year-old girl named Kara Neumann died from diabetic ketoacidosis. Treatments of insulin almost certainly would have controlled the ailment, but Kara’s parents (whose beliefs about physical healing were shaped in part by a Florida-based online ministry) chose to treat her with prayer in lieu of medical science. Dale and Leilani Neumann later told police that their daughter had not been examined by a physician in more th…
Read More…. His misuse of the Bible for reactionary politics is wrong. His dichotomy between evangelism and environmentalism is wrong. His demonization of thoughtful pro-environment Christians is wrong.” Robison’s agenda for the 2012 election draws from that same well of contempt for a contemporary secular democracy. Kaylor points to Robison’s June 3 blog post, which reads like a theo-economic merger of a religious right and Tea Party wishlist (a merger Rob…
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…itzmiller v. Dover case, isn’t aware of the enormous difference in content between creationism on one hand, and the scientific critique of Darwinism, or the related theory of intelligent design, on the other.” Well, Mr. Klinghoffer, I am aware of the differences. And you know who else is aware of them? Board members in the Livingston Parish school district who enthusiastically talked about using the new LSEA standards to teach kids creationism. Be…
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