Religion Dispatches
…a report issued by the reliable Southern Poverty Law Center last year, the number of extremist Patriot groups has skyrocketed. Only 149 groups existed before Obama was elected in 2008. In 2012 the number had expanded to 1,360. Not all are plotting terrorist attacks, of course. But some are. In September 2012, Daryl Johnson, a terrorist analyst for the US Department of Homeland Security testified before a Senate committee that there was an “upsurge…
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…ad of the OCA, is also a convert from the Episcopal Church, and one who seems equally fixated on culture war issues—particular, abortion and same-sex marriage—as his predecessor. Predictably, the consequences of his leadership have been horrific, even beyond last week’s chilling statement. The OCA has failed, for example, to offer a strident condemnation of Vladimir Putin or Patriarch Kirill in light of the invasion of Ukraine. This is in no small…
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…blems as well. The SBC had been almost flat on the membership charts for a number of years, but now it’s actually started to lose members. In 2013, the SBC claimed 15,735,640 members, and in 2014, that number fell by 236,467 to 15,499,173—that’s a 1.5 percent decline. However, on this stat alone, the claim could be made that churches are simply clearing out the cobwebs and tidying up their membership rolls so their numbers more accurately reflect…
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…inciple. If the right of religion says that you can invoke your speech claims or your religious claims not to comply with an anti-discrimination rule, that puts everybody who is protected at risk.” Of course, litigating the question of where a business owner’s religious freedom ends and a citizen’s right to equal accommodation begins is nothing new. Melling offered a long list of cases argued in state and federal courts where religious adherents s…
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…ious ‘nones‘ within the population as a whole, the share of the electorate with no religious affiliation also is little changed compared with other recent midterms (12% in both 2010 and 2014).” Political organizing and turnout matter far more than numbers….
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…at has grown over four years despite the kids ripped from their parents’ arms, the ongoing police murders of Black people, the graft and self-dealing, and the never-ending cascade of lies and venom. To Black/Indigenous/People of Color the message of this election could not be more clear, regardless of whether Biden manages to squeak through and get himself sworn in. The blunt message from more than half of their white American neighbors is get out…
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…ade harsh remarks. Critics of gay rights say this nation — which has large numbers of Muslims and Christians — must protect traditional values. In an August speech, Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam, the capital, threatened to arrest people who were linked to gay men on social-networking sites. “If there’s a homosexual who has a Facebook account, or with an Instagram account, all those who ‘follow’ him — it is very clear tha…
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…, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to support West Bank settlements, which, no matter how J Street c…
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…evil so deep and enduring that few people want to talk about it. The sheer number of victims and their willingness to come forward despite whatever stigma they might endure give this case special status. The colonialism alone is repulsive; the legal ramifications boggle the mind; and the religious implications for a very Catholic country are staggering. If this is how the new guidelines work with regard to sexual abuse victims, I say back to the d…
Read More…adical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for racism…
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