Religion Dispatches
…who wants a Christian president, particularly one who would revise the tax code “so we can rejoice together because it would stimulate economic growth.” (Huckabee’s hosted debate, though, this past weekend, was more of a snooze than a circus.) In 2008 Huckabee got a fundraising boost from Kenneth Copeland, Word of Faith megastar. Copeland, at the time under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee for misuse of tax-deductible donor funds, cla…
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…ral character. Even respectable white women like Ford must comply with the code of silence protecting toxic masculinity. The demonization of Ford by the right is yet another indication of how low the GOP faithful are willing to go to gut human and civil rights. As ReproAction Network has noted, Kavanaugh’s repugnant record on women’s rights puts him in lockstep with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. His well-documented, insidious appellate co…
Read More…ed into the “founding principles,” “Judeo-Christian” foundation, and other code, but they did more. They wept; they told stories about soldiers and family members; they evoked imagery of mountains climbed and enemies vanquished. Mitt Romney, though? Not so much. Speaking directly after Pence, who since the inaugural Values Voters Summit in 2006, has always invoked the language of the religious right base, Romney was at a disadvantage. He was borin…
Read More…at may have wide-reaching influence, the Supreme Court of British Columbia today opened deliberations in a constitutional reference case to determine whether a small group of fundamentalist Mormons living in a remote B.C. community called Bountiful may practice religiously-motivated plural marriage without fear of prosecution or conviction. Before a courtroom packed with legal experts, scholars, civil libertarians, and child rights advocates, just…
Read More…ned. Jumping the gun, or perhaps the shark, writers from the LA Times, USA Today, NY Times, and many other major outlets have already weighed in, well before the finale sinks in. What then am I offering in the midst of the hullabaloo? Why write before it is over? Why write at all? Because the ultimate response to the show’s questions have already been answered. The ending of the finale is (spoiler alert) not important. There are no answers that ca…
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…mes below the dividing line stand for fictional characters. The same color code was applied to match an author to his/her fictional creation.) First, what this diagram shows is a continuum of diminishing intensity of God-hatred from left to center: from rage, to hatred, to anger, to resentment. And, as we can see, as the intensity of hatred for the “real” God diminishes, it enters a phase where it can coexist with the diminished hatred for a God…
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…se, whether the editors of Teen Vogue really did make a pact with Satan to promote sodomy. We’ll get to that, I promise. There are a few important things that have to be said first. In case you missed this latest episode of U.S. religious debate, the facts are pretty simple. Earlier this month, Teen Vogue posted an article on anal sex under the heading “Sexual Health & Identity.” (Deep breath! Yes, you have just read the phrase “anal sex” and not…
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…reply to my later email, I was directed to three local parishes in my zip code to find out about attending their listening sessions. A priest from one of the three I contacted replied courteously but had to report that the parish has nothing in place yet. He assured me that they would do whatever the diocese instructed. A recent survey by America magazine staff confirmed my suspicions that the process is off to a rocky start: “Of the 196 churches…
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…with regard to “cracked identity,” it seems to me that Jewish homosexuals today are far less emotionally stressed by the code that ruled out the possibility of being both Jewish and gay. Even among some Orthodox Jewish communities the issue is being addressed—though not yet resolved. I love your notion of “layered ethnographies”—in which you add to prior ethnographies rather than amend them. So, the ethnography of CBST includes the first and seco…
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…Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others,” was rejected by religious conservatives. 3. The Enlightenment Ends Here: Board members voted to remove Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. Instead, they replaced him with theologians Thomas Aquinas and…
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