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Shades of Christian Reconstructionism in Trump Education Pick, Betsy DeVos

By Julie Ingersoll

…ony. Framed as “school choice,” vouchers, charter schools, and tuition tax credit plans serve this goal by shifting public funds toward religious schools with little to no accountability to the public. In Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction I wrote about one such school in Florida that teaches creationism, dominionism, women’s submission, and so forth, with public money. Opposition to public education for the relig…

Will “Church Militants” Be Marching for Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…influential on the religious and political right than they’re often given credit for, largely because of the misperception that the (protestant) Christian right is the religious right. While it’s true that it’s the protestant right that’s traditionally been the electoral powerhouse of the Republican Party, much of the intellectual underpinning of cultural dogmas associated with the right have their basis in right-wing Catholic thinking. It was co…

Manchester—Last Gasp of a Failing Terror Movement?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…e terrorist movement of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seems to claim credit for anything violent these days, and it is not yet clear whether Abedi was directed to carry out this mission by ISIS leaders in Syria or whether it was simply branded that way. Abedi may have just been sympathetic with their ideas and carried out the attack on his own. Either way, it may give the impression that ISIS is still in the game. By being connected with suc…

Have White Evangelicals Become More Accepting of Candidates’ Personal Immorality, as New Data Suggests?

By Michael Schulson

…iment to the record of good public servants. Among white evangelicals, the number was even higher—72%, or a 42 point increase over the 2011 data. Credit: PRRI So has “[Donald Trump] changed all that,” as Jonathan Chait asserted, referring to evangelicals’ earlier views? Has the moral majority become the “immoral minority”? And is this a sign of a “sudden, massive shift” among white evangelicals, as one journalist put it on Twitter? Not necessari…

How Thanksgiving Became All Dinner, No Worship

By Bruce David Forbes

…3 as a national day of thanksgiving, many people assume Hale deserved much credit. That proclamation, not for a particular purpose but as a general thanksgiving, is considered the beginning of the modern annual American Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, all of the decades-long Thanksgiving advocacy prior to Lincoln’s proclamation never included any mention of the 1621 Pilgrim and Indian story, the basis of so many Thanksgiving pageants in the 1900s. The…

Mexico’s Religious Conservatives Seek Anti-LGBT Constitutional Amendment, LGBT Activists Defend Secular Government; Cash From Qatar Funds ‘Traditional’ Family Activism Worldwide; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…could compromise the efforts of local activists” by allowing them to be discredited as “Western.” Has public advocacy from America to make gays and lesbians more visible also left them more vulnerable? Probably so, says Julie Dorf, a senior adviser at the Council for Global Equality — but she’s quick to add that the backlash is notAmerica’s fault. The rise of anti-gay violence and anti-gay legislation in parts of Africa, she says, is a response to…

Did the Church Create or Co-Opt Human Rights?

By Austin Dacey

…abor Prime Minister Peter Fraser, New Zealand had made common cause with a number of smaller countries and civil society organizations in pressing for recognition of human rights in the Charter. Oddly, Moyn credits the political theorist Charles Beitz with the “remarkable discovery” of Gildersleeve’s contribution, although Gildersleeve described the events in a memoir published in 1954 (the fact even appears in an otherwise meager Wikipedia entry,…

A New, Softer Prosperity Gospel Still Can’t Deliver On Its Promises of Health and Wealth

By Verdell A. Wright

…in a savings account, can’t afford an extra expense of $500 without using credit, and has experienced food and/or housing insecurity at some point in their life, it is apparent that theologies of prosperity are not impacting the material realities of those who believe them. Despite their ability to fit the sensibilities of the day, these theologies still legitimize the ills of society and place the blame for systemic injustice at the feet of the…

The Invention of a Corporate Christian America

By Andrew Aghapour

…re capable of having religious beliefs, but that such beliefs make these businesses exempt from the laws of the regulatory state. Image credit: “The Senior Partner” by Nathan Greene….

‘No Room’ for Gays in Country that Worships God [Kenya] | Churches Fight to Keep Sexuality Out of Sex Ed [S. Korea] | Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…also known by the nickname Saintodosly, told the Blade during a recent telephone interview from Lagos that Aladekugbe used his brother and six students to set him up. “They had suspected before based on the firm belief that people of same-sex orientation should not be discriminated by the church,” said Sylvester. “That is what I always said to this school and it was at this school that people should not be discriminated. When they asked me, I said…