Religion Dispatches
…in on the panel’s agitprop. When none other than the former director of intelligence worries aloud about the “creeping erosion of our rights,” the CPAC audience sits up and listens. And they were also listening to someone who thinks that a far-right nationalist in Europe is someone to admire….
Read More…agons and strenuously defending the “homosexual practice” forbidden in its code of ethics, the school is reaching out. 51 of the school’s 92 faculty members responded, seeking “forgiveness for ways we might have added to your pain.” “We’re hoping to do a better job of talking to and loving each other and holding true to our scriptural principles,” said Jane Higa, the school’s vice president for student life. That doesn’t mean the school’s policy w…
Read More…, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.” However, in the case of Florida, the bill’s sponsoring lawmaker Rep…
Read More…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…
Read More…s “weird.” The news set off a wave of speculation that weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an inter…
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…ayer of my persuasion (we’ll call her Petra from Yuma) finds using the tax code to benefit such schools offensive to the First Amendment. In the past, Petra from Yuma could go into court to challenge the tax credit as a form of state-subsidized religion. But Petra (or a Thomas Jefferson redivivus, for that matter) is now out of luck. The core issue is whether providing the tax credit has the exact same practical impact as simply giving tax revenue…
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…stians should not practice yoga because it is religiously Hindu. Fundamentalist Hindus agree that yoga is indeed Hindu and has been inappropriately co-opted by members of other religions. Because the politics of yoga is so intimately tied to the religious dimensions, we need to critically examine decisions about what counts as religious for their political implications and real-life consequences. If members of society, both yogis and non-yogis, at…
Read More…rts which, Gaffney maintains, is happening as we speak. Khan and other panelists were confronted by followers of Gaffney, equipped with video cameras, about their supposed ties to jihadists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other assorted bogeymen. Here, at Faith and Freedom, Breger and Gaffney were on the same panel, described in the program as “Defeating Terrorism and Jihad,” but which was much more about the supposed threat of shari’ah than terroris…
Read More…dismissive and reductive portrayal of Tea Partiers as racist; instead, panelists Cord Jefferson, an editor at GOOD magazine, Maria Teresa Kumar, executive director of Voto Latino, and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), discussed what they viewed as the legitimate grievances of their fellow Americans against what Edwards called “an environment of scarcity,” in which the “top two percenters” (in income) “cause us to turn on each other.” The emphasis was not…
Read More…h reads like a theo-economic merger of a religious right and Tea Party wishlist (a merger Robison endorsed last year while helping Ralph Reed promote the launch of his Faith and Freedom Coalition). In a nutshell: America should be ruled by God, not government, with no abortion, gay marriage, or jurisprudence Robison disagrees with; the market should be kept “free, healthy, and under the influence of people who understand that importance of persona…
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