Religion Dispatches
…has been irrelevant or even detrimental, even if they long admired his family and childrearing advice. In 2008 and 2012, there were several Republican candidates who fit the conservative Christian mold, and who competed for the evangelical vote. None emerged as the eventual nominee, although both eventual nominees played lip service to evangelical concerns. This cycle, as I wrote on several occasions last year, Donald Trump has scrambled the form…
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…ses. So it would not be surprising if someone like the gun-loving Hutaree militia group or a lone Timothy McVeigh (whose bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building took place two days after Patriots’ Day in 1995) were found to have been involved. Groups like this have been on the rise since the election of President Barack Obama, and even more so since his reelection. According to a report issued by the reliable Southern Poverty Law Center last…
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…to endorsing sinful conduct—has not reached the nation’s highest court until this year. In an interesting—or ominous—shift from prior cases on this issue, ADF is leaning heavily on its claims that both the baker and florist in these cases are artists, whose work has inherent artistic merit. They argue that their clients cannot be compelled to engage in artistic expression that contradicts an artist’s “sincerely held religious belief.” That’s a sl…
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…holics. As Catherine Rampell noted in the Post, “Democrats name-checked family values, faith, patriotism and the military, all topics traditionally more closely associated with Republicans.” But the party went beyond “name checking” faith. From the Mothers of the Movement who spoke openly about how their Christian faith gives them strength to soldier on; to the Rev. William Barber’s electrifying speech, that, as Ari Berman said in The Nation, “put…
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…support is being generated by those outside the church fold simultaneously resolves a paradox and absolves the church. It’s time for the zombie hypothesis—that Trump’s evangelical support is due to a growing number of unchurched White evangelicals—to finally be laid to rest. Letting that biased theory go will allow us to have a clearer understanding not only of our politics but of our churches….
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…re operated out of parishes and dioceses eligible for the exemption. This will, Catholics for Choice argues, increase the number of employees of Catholic organizations who would be deprived of contraception coverage, even if they aren’t Catholic themselves (or are Catholics who dissent from the church’s opposition to birth control). HHS notes in its rule that “the exemption should not exclude group health plans of religious entities that would qu…
Read More…be evil powers, but the Gambia is a righteous power protected by God. We will prevail by the grace of the Almighty Allah. All forces of evil that have bad intention towards the Gambia will perish. We will not change our way of life.” Russia: US Religious Activists Thank God for Putin’s Russia We reported last fall on the social conservative conference held in Moscow, which was originally planned as the World Congress of Families Summit, but lost…
Read More…d trust something like I trust Google. Speaking of which, I checked my e-mail last week. One of our church members sent me an e-mail “these *quote* demographics *unquote* don’t really surprise me, but it’s scary to see them all together in this video.” He goes to a different Sunday School class. Oh, and here’s what I wrote to my great aunt: Dear Aunt “E”, I agree, as Christians we have fallen down on our job, but the content presented in this vide…
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…ncovered (31), the number of Israeli soldiers killed in action (29). These numbers will likely change every hour. In the weeks leading up to the Israeli invasion of Gaza and now as increasingly grisly accounts and bloody images emerge of Palestinian homes and hospitals blown apart, American Jews are conflicted—alternately protesting against or rallying behind the Israeli state, following each development obsessively, or turning their faces away fr…
Read More…verseas in places like Somalia and Yemen. Even if we take the conservative number of 2 million Muslims in the U.S., that means 0.01% of Muslims are involved in terrorism-related activity over the span of a decade. Per annum, it is 0.001%. If we take a more realistic number of 4 million American Muslims, the numbers become 0.005% over a decade, or 0.0005% per year. Last year there were 14,000 homicides in the U.S., and with a population of 300,000,…
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