Religion Dispatches
…he rate of poverty among black vs. white Americans hasn’t changed since the 1960s). In The Fire Next Time, whose essays were first published in 1962 but damningly relevant 52 years later, James Baldwin writes that for blacks, “[American society] is entirely hostile, and, by its nature, seems determined to cut you down …[as it] has cut down so many in the past and cuts down so many every day…The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this coun…
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…out the cover? I think Beacon did a fantastic job in conceptualizing a number of the ideas in the book with this cover, which includes a male hand clenching a fistful of arrows. In Quiverfull, as parents seek to have a “full quiver” of children, the children become “arrows” in their parents’ arsenal, following the model of Psalm 127, “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is ful…
Read More…urrently, 78% of white evangelicals support Donald Trump (identical to the number that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012). John McCain? 74%. George W. Bush 2000 and 2004? 68 and 78%, respectively. And despite the whopper of zombie lies told by Ted Cruz, no, 54 million evangelical voters did not stay home in 2012, rather than vote for Romney. In fact, white evangelicals have made up around one-quarter of the electorate ever since 2000. According to Pew…
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…at led me to research and write about the White supremacy movement. Between 1985 and 1994, I was the research director at the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network). Why did you decide to write Blood and Politics? It became apparent to me that much of the received wisdom about White supremacists was simply wrong. And I wanted to write a book that did not just say what I thought was correct, but I wanted to show it…
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…oy created on the first night that they met each other and the guru back in 1968 ended. My brother, on the other hand, is still a very devout member of the cult. He wrote me a letter saying that he could not support my decision and that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. He still lives right in the hub of the ashram. I also have an aunt, my father’s sister, who is a devoted member as well, who also has had no contact with me or my pare…
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…points about human impact on the natural world that Glacken didn’t have in 1967. These updated data points will overly determine everything in society moving forward, including how humans produce religion and thus how we academically study, research, and teach about it. They’re also data points published in just the last two months, bridging 2020 into 2021. Trends suggest future data points will only be more alarming and more severe, but we’ll ge…
Read More…DP signed the LGBTI Rights Agreement upon being elected. After the November 1st repeat of the general election, 16 of these candidates were elected once again. European Union: LGBT Rights in progress reports for nations seeking EU membership On Thursday, the European Commission published its annual progress reports on seven countries’ progress toward EU membership: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey….
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…the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land,…
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…l Been Ready.” The movie scared countless teenagers (and probably an equal number of adults) into preparing for the rapture. Millennial fervor swept evangelicals again in the late 1990s on the heels of the two-term Clinton presidency. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins published Left Behind, the first in a series of novels that grew into the best-selling series of the past decade (until they were finally overtaken by the true prince of darkness himself,…
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…14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch. Whether the dip in the number of bills introduced is attributable to Covid-19, the toxicity of the Project Blitz brand, or some other combination of factors is hard to say. In 2020 and 2021, 24 of the bills introduced involved displays of In God We Trust in public buildings or on license plates, while 16 were largely about religious exemptions and state versions of the federal Religious Freedom R…
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