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Pastafarian Rights, Israeli Rosa Parks, Orthodox
Jewish P.I.

By Michael J. Altman

…t. IHOP is one of the sponsors for “Prayin’” Rick Perry’s day of prayer in Texas. An atheist group in Texas is suing Governor Perry for his involvement with the prayer event. An Austrian man convinced authorities to let him take his driver’s license photo wearing a pasta strainer on his head as the religious headgear of his Pastafarianism. The Church of England may sell its $6 million share in the scandalized News Corp. Controversy continues to su…

Rick Perry’s Kingmaker, and David Brooks Wakes Up

By Sarah Posner

…and giant inanities that are our political culture. And look who’s rising (Texas Governor Rick Perry, with several profiles presaging his presidential run, but not his Christian right bona fides) and who’s falling (Godfather Pizza exec and Americans for Prosperity favorite Herman Cain, with campaign staff defections coming “after weeks of swirling rumors between Cain’s staff and volunteers in the Hawkeye State accusing each other of affairs, homos…

Coming Out on a Christian Campus, Then and Now

By Ed Madden

…Christ. In the rural churches where I grew up, there were no pianos in the sanctuary because there aren’t any in the New Testament, and churches could split over whether or not you used one cup or multiple cups for the communion grape juice, or whether there could be a social hall in the church. Even water fountains could cause consternation. I remember a quite-heated argument, as a high school student, over whether or not church-supported entitie…

“Taliban Dan’s” Teacher: Inside Bill Gothard’s Authoritarian Subculture

By Sarah Posner

…y member of Congress with deep connections to Gothard. Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who just became chair of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, is the chair of the board of directors of the IBLP. Other politicians, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, have spoken at IBLP conferences, and Mike Huckabee is fan. And many others, such as Sarah Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, have attended his ostensibly secular (but not) Int…

Why Did Vandals Try to Destroy a Holy Tree?

By Joseph Laycock

…and the feelings that motivated them were human feelings. It may be unpleasant to contemplate, but the occasional desire to destroy creation and spite humanity is not reserved for the criminally insane. One recalls the narrator of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, “I was in the mood to destroy something beautiful.” Terry Eagleton argues that evil originates in a twisted yearning for the transcendent. Evildoers, he argues, are motivated by an id…

Stephen Broden, Beck’s Black Robed Regiment In Action

By Sarah Posner

Via TMPDC, Think Progress reports on Texas congressional candidate Stephen Broden’s radio interview in which he says that a violent revolution to overthrow the government is “on the table.” On Glenn Beck’s special program on religion in America on July 1, Broden said, “I think that the thing that we’re fighting here against, Glenn, is that there is a power grab on the part of the progressive left. And in order for them to effectively pull power f…

Paranoia and the Progressive Press: A Response to WaPo’s Religion Columnist

By Peter Montgomery

…e doesn’t make the case. Miller links to recent in-depth articles from the Texas Observer, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast, but doesn’t really engage substantively with any of their reporting. Instead, Miller gives a pro forma acknowledgment that the stories “raise real concerns” about candidates’ worldviews while portraying the articles broadly as evidence of unfair attacks on evangelicals from a hysterical anti-Christian “left.” She calls do…

Conviction of FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs Overturned

By Joanna Brooks

…select number of FLDS members to the faith’s remote compound in Eldorado, Texas. Jeffs will stand a new trial in Utah scheduled to begin on August 23, and he faces extradition to Texas. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is also being pressured to review state rape statutes to better deal with the situation of arranged underage marriages in polygamous communities. Two days after the news broke, Anderson Cooper hosted a show on the case. What st…

Israeli Right Demonizes Israeli Left, With American Money

By Diane Winston

…right-wing groups and individuals, including John Hagee, the controversial Texas minister whose endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain was rejected after his anti-Catholic remarks were widely publicized.* Hagee heads Christians United for Israel and John Hagee Ministries, which donated 100,000 dollars to the group.** Also on board with Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund for Israel, a New York-based nonprofit that funds settler mil…

Louisiana Students Must Choose: Religion or Science

By Lauri Lebo

…she believes that Louisiana’s battles have been overshadowed by the recent Texas textbook fight in which members of the Board of Education have been trying to sneak creationist language into the curriculum. With its incredible power over textbook publishers, Texas (which buys its books at the state level and is the second largest purchaser of textbooks in the country next to California) has been grabbing the anti-evolution headlines. Meanwhile, Ch…