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Obama Inaugural Address Challenges Tea Party History

…the Republic included “as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free,” when the more common version these days calls on us to “live to make men free.”  Yet even with regard to the way military force has been central to what it means to be American, the president presented a new narrative, asserting that “peace and lasting security do not mean we are in a state of perpetual war.” One of the most important ways in which the tea party and…

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How Far Will White Christians Go to Maintain Power? An Interview with Robert Jones

…hristians have merely been paying lip service to democratic principles and free elections, or whether they really believe in those principles and norms now that white Christians have become a demographic minority. This is all quite new—this reality of not being a majority white Christian country. We’ve gone from 54% white Christian to just 44% since Obama was first elected, or a drop of about 1% per year. Previous generations of white Christians h…

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“I’m a Creationist,” Says Former Times Tech Writer, Heffernan

…onsequential things. They matter. Sure, in the modern world we do have the freedom to choose our guiding stories. And, here in postmodernity, we do have theories that relativize and contextualize, making that choice seem arbitrary. But none of this means that, once we’ve chosen an idea, it exists in a vacuum, tickling our minds and having no effect on things like, say, funding for scientific research, or the rights of children to have a public edu…

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Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

…lack theology, making Judaism a logical model for crafting a new faith for free people. But Jesus, too, was important in black faith, and most of the Jewish-inspired denominations that sprang up did not renounce him. Instead, they claimed white Jews were imposters to the faith who had misunderstood Christ’s significance. Broadly speaking, these black “messianic” groups held beliefs that resemble elements of Seventh Day Adventism and Jews for Jesus…

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In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

…ng any distinctive rights or obligations: bye-bye to the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the Constitution, etc. They might as well protect us from the “establishment” of widget and the “free exercise” thereof. Both are meaningless, since neither “widget” nor “religion” point to anything specific. Linker, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite tack: he legislates the meaning of “religion” as those particular referents marked by the…

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Olympic Ritual and Religion, Hosted by a Religion-less State

…rd where human rights are concerned, especially those rights regarding the free exercise of religious belief. Item Two: Beginning on Friday evening, 8/8/08, the same government in Beijing began hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, giving explicit voice to the implicit religious sentiments of those Games. Item Three: The most expensive ticket, and the hardest one to come by at the Modern Olympics, is a ticket to the Opening Ceremonies, where precisely n…

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Far-Right Evangelicals And The Campaign Against Obama

…ht are the ultimate camp followers. They’re latching onto government for a free ride while decrying it. They want to overthrow the present order from the inside in the name of God. The result is that there are two kinds of far-right evangelicals: the ones who make a public show of their animosity toward the president, accusing him of not being an American citizen, for example. They even say Obama has a secret plan to kill old people within his hea…

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Searching for Moral High Ground While Houston Drowns: A Perspective on the Lakewood Church Controversy

…istianity function so closely with some of the core American ideals around free-market capitalism, wealth and consumerism. Prosperity gospel, for instance, only makes logical sense in a system of free-market capitalism. Those core American ideals have come under assault in very public ways when measured against the yardstick of liberation theology and faith-based social justice initiatives. By Tuesday afternoon, August 29, news sources were report…

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‘Do You Want Columbia to be Cursed by God?’ — Alarming Exchanges in Congress and Beyond Highlight the Desperate Need for Religious Literacy

…itism, Islamophobia, (anti-)Zionism, and Israel (not to mention democracy, free speech, and open dialogue). These debates would be more fruitful if informed by the way scholars of religion approach their subject matter. As a starting point I’ve found Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy Project and its four principles (which also happen to be guiding principles of RD) to be helpful in the classroom: Devotional religious expression is disti…

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House Votes to Repeal DADT

…when the gay ban disappeared. Would-be harassers realized women were now “free to report assaults without fear that they would be accused of and subsequently discharged for being a lesbian.” In the U.S. military, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported in 2000 that “55 percent of women experienced sexual harassment in the military. And a 2005 study estimates that more than half of women in the reserves and National Guard suffered sexual assau…

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