Religion Dispatches
…campaign against Perriello, a Democrat representing a swath of central and southwest Virginia who was once considered a poster child for the Democrats’ faith outreach. After helping to launch Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faithful America, Perriello beat Republican incumbent Virgil Goode in 2008, but is now virtually tied in the polls with his Republican challenger Robert Hurt. The ad, which FRC considers “one of the most humorous”…
Read More…views on everyone else, but make sure they’re free to mock that very moral code. Democrats fear that argument. That’s why their approach has been, especially since about 2006 or so, to try to make themselves out to be the “authentic” Christians who truly care about their neighbors and all that. The Aqua Buddha ad may have been a bad strategic move in Kentucky; we’ll never really know. But Conway — without, as far as I can tell, invoking treacly re…
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…those things, but I didn’t,” says Birge. “I was very naïve. I should have listened to my instincts, but instead I listened to other people, and trusted this man’s judgment, because he had the stamp of approval from the church.” Hernandez (who declined several offers to comment for this story) offered to drive Birge to a nearby Wendy’s to talk, but instead he drove to a dark part of town, where he parked, lowered Birge’s seat and climbed on top of…
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…chers and school districts to use “supplemental textbooks,” which are just code words for creationist and pro-intelligent design materials. Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, co-founder of Louisiana Citizens for Science and one of the creationist movement’s most damning critics, said she believes the complaints are merely a tactic to get disclaimers (Warning: These books teach evolution!) added to the tex…
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…certed “Zionist attack.” For those unclear that “Zionist” in some minds is code not for the problematically successful movement toward Jewish self-determination, but rather for the fabled machinations of the Elders of Zion, the speaker continued: “They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.” Babini has since denied ownership of these words (though the Guardian noted his leg…
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…using on the last week of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, Christians are listening to horrific accounts of priestly sexual abuse of children and wondering whether Pope Benedict XVI will take decisive action to cleanse the Church. Probably he will not. After more than half a century of living and working in an all-male club he just doesn’t get it. His focus has been purity of doctrine, not the purity of those who say Mass and administer the Churc…
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UPDATE: Listen to Glenn Beck read and attack this post on air. Great, so now, just in time for the holidays, Glenn Beck tries to co-opt one of the few unifying rituals of this season, one of the remaining events that we on all sides of the political and religious spectrum can sit down and truly enjoy together. Yes, Beck is now trying to steal the great 1946 Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life and turn it into a rallying cry for the conserva…
Read More…lthy gays and lesbians want to end our “religious freedoms” — which is the code phrase for “they want to pass hate crimes laws that make it illegal for us to call them the filthy sinners they are.” As a Christian, who just also happens to be a lesbian, I take offense at this continuing campaign on the religious right to promote this false dichotomy of gays vs. God. No one in the gay and lesbian community wants to curb anyone’s “religious freedom.”…
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…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…
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…eld said that “Gen. Boykin gave many in the field just the kind of warrior code they needed to fulfill their duties with moral passion.” In an extensive, and highly-documented, review of Mansfield’s Ten Tortured Words, Rodda, pointed out that the book was shot full of a series of historical errors and noted that “Mansfield makes David Barton, whose masterpiece of historical revisionism, Original Intent, is listed in the bibliography of Ten Torture…
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