Religion Dispatches
…e pimped out on the internet by perverts. Now, social media has become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the phone to Sarah Palin, and counsel her about her kids’ activity on Facebook. Bristol Palin found time from her “Dancing with the stars” practice to get on Facebook with her sister Willow to ride on a friend who had the chutzpah to say “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is failing so hard right now.” Willow’s response was to…
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…ice is being put to such use in the Arch City Religion Project, one of the latest digital means of mapping (and remapping) American Christianities and American religions more broadly. Run by St. Louis University professor Rachel McBride Lindsey, a scholar of religion and visual culture and author of the recently released A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America, the Arch City Religion Project is a teaching pro…
Read More…ve played a large role in opposing same-sex marriage issues, including the latest attempt to pass marriage equality in Maryland. “They’re not going to be distracted by any polls and certainly not what the laity says about these things. We’ll certainly see a lot of activism on the part of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to try to keep at bay the move toward increasing laws favoring same-sex marriage,” Dillon said. Another surprise in th…
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…those who’ve been following events closely, that denunciation of policies promoting racial equality will likely recall the Trump administration’s twisted 1776 Report, which the White House released on Martin Luther King Day—Monday, January 18—as a clear racist dog whistle. The “report” emphasizes the American founders’ supposed insistence that faith in God is necessary for good citizenship and decries “globalists,” “multiculturalists,” and propon…
Read MoreAs David Cook prepared for his victory on the latest season of American Idol, the Republican state chairwoman of Georgia was engaged in paying reverence to a different type of American idol. In a bizarre moment in the world of mixing religion and politics, Sue Everhart compared Republican presidential candidate John McCain to Jesus and America to God. Addressing McCain’s patriotism and devotion to America even while being tortured as a prisoner o…
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…he protections granted by last year’s Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision. But, as church and state scholars have pointed out, the law is “excruciatingly different” from other religious freedom laws because it specifies exactly which religious beliefs it is based on. Most importantly, this latest suit highlights the fact that laws that discriminate against LGBT people (or deny reproductive rights) based on “religious freedom” don’t just ha…
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The latest gruesome video released by ISIS showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff, just thirteen days after the execution of James Foley, is a stark reminder – if such reminders are necessary – of the blood-thirsty brutality of ISIS. ISIS’s flag is black and white, the perfect colors for a group that seeks to implement “Islam,” which it sets against a world of disbelief (kufr). Christians, who’ve been living amongst Muslims f…
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On the latest episode of my Bloggingheads.tv program, I spoke with Nation columnist Katha Pollitt about her recent piece on Planned Parenthood’s new “Not In Her Shoes” campaign. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 70% of respondents favor upholding Roe v. Wade. Given the state of public opinion, Pollitt and I discussed whether Planned Parenthood’s decision to move away from the term “pro-choice” is a good idea, and what it means to f…
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…we’re statistics—the subject of a poll question—we’re not real people. The latest poll among polls about the lives of theoretical gay people comes from Public Religion Research and shows a majority of Americans are for granting some manner of legal recognition to gay unions, either marriage (29 percent) or civil unions (28 percent). Younger respondents, between the ages of 18 and 34, strongly support marriage equality (46 percent) while 23 percent…
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…again a desire to “just get past this race stuff” or that this is just the latest grievance and can we just get back to the fundamentals or to history or to some notion of a tradition. Another misconception is that race must be either a social construction and therefore not “real” or an essential category. In reality, it is an idea that has shaped so much of how we think about ourselves, and even more, structured the order of our lives together. W…
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