Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet free promo code today Egypt

Whistleblower Alleges $100B Hoarding Scandal by LDS Church; But There’s An Easy Fix

…ransparency requirements. Even the most extreme understanding of religious freedom could not stop Congress from legislating transparency because accountability to the taxpayers does not “prohibit” or even hinder the free exercise of religion. For instance, Ensign claims that “the amassed funds would be used in the event of the second coming of Christ.” But filing financial information with the IRS would not prohibit the church from hoarding this w…

Read More

Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

…rbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the public to think more critically about what “religion” is. They are directly challenging the popular notion that religion is really about supernaturalism. I met several Satanists who had been hostile to the idea of “religion,” until they discovered TST and re-imagined what a religion co…

Read More

There’s Nothing Wrong with ‘Prayer’; But There’s Every Reason to be Skeptical of Pence’s Coronavirus Prayer Circle

…that words like “regular,” “real,” and “normal,” in this context are often code for “conservative white Christians”? Might Merritt have devoted a thought or two to the possibility that American criticism of “thoughts and prayers” responses to real-world problems have everything to do with the fact that right-wing Christians—white evangelicals above all—constitute the one demographic that stands in the way of us seriously addressing our gun violenc…

Read More

Does ‘Criss-Cross Apple Sauce’ Make Yoga Secular? Opponents of Yoga in Public Schools Have a Point

…nterviewed). The 1993 Alabama State Department of Education Administrative Code prohibits public school personnel from using “any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga,” and defines yoga as “a Hindu philosophy and method of religious training in which eastern meditation and contemplation are joined with physical exercises, allegedly to facilitate the development of body-mind-spirit.” The propo…

Read More

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

…to explain and tiring to unpack. After all, we don’t exactly have a racism-free America to compare it to since, sadly, such a nation has never existed. Besides, how does one person teach another to treat human beings like human beings? But I can tell you without a doubt that a start would have been not being able to count on one hand the number of Black children in my entire Christian school student-body. Do Black educators only exist in public sc…

Read More

The Wrong Man: Why Falwell’s Paying for His Indiscretion But Trump Gets a Pass

…t his clothing and mystery beverage were in violation of Liberty’s student code of conduct (as some students were quick to note)? Or was this just the final straw in an already-collapsing heap of negative attention? As a scholar of religion and American culture, I would argue that these aren’t the most helpful sorts of questions to ask. Rather, if we want to understand what’s going on here, then we need to think of this photo as a moment exposing…

Read More

Trump’s Nominee to Fill RBG’s Seat Is Unfit. By Definition.

…mpartiality and integrity are ethical commandments for federal judges. The Code of Conduct for United States Judges lays out ethical canons. Canon #1 says that judges must uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary. Canon #3 requires that judges perform their duties fairly, impartially, and diligently. For no credible reason the Supreme Court has no written ethics rules; its unwritten rules ought to be the same. In their desperation to…

Read More

A Link to Jewish History, RBG’s Iconic Collars Were a Beacon for the Marginalized

…elivered—dissent and approval, femininity and righteousness and pleasure—encoded the proceedings with a special kind of attention, another layer to Supreme Court ritual. Those fabric beacons shone powerfully for those of us who have experienced marginalization, had to code switch from setting to setting, or learned to express ourselves through subtle cues beyond formal language. While it’s not a huge surprise that some of Ginsburg’s collars will r…

Read More

What Does Satanism Have to do With QAnon?

…hrough the leadership of psychiatrists, police “cult-experts,” counselors, freelance Satanism ‘experts,’ and evangelical pastors—individuals who shifted their workaday professional roles to performing as charismatic moral entrepreneurs. In both the 1980s and 90s, and most recently through QAnon, the image of gothic Satanic rituals proliferating through public media have exploited real moral crises in popular culture. In the late twentieth century…

Read More

Cherry-Picking in the God Gap: A Post-Election Conversation on the Religious Vote and the Battle to Spin it

…d blog post on the issue, he still wrote, “I think Planned Parenthood is a code name for baby-killing.” Someone who thinks like that is not someone liberals can work with. And what could be more delegitimizing than Republicans clearly demonstrating that they’re no longer dedicated to democratic norms, to protecting the federal bureaucracy from politicization, to fairness, to democracy itself? McConnell’s Senate Republicans pushed through the confi…

Read More