Religion Dispatches
…ion. Perhaps in the wake of the tragedy in Ferguson there will be a renewed vigor from progressive churches that will help repair old coalitions, build new ones, and tell a new story about who gets to speak “for religious people.”…
Read More…s might have talked about peace and poverty, but Francis’s much-discussed “new tone” seems like a permission slip for Democrats to talk religion without a full scale showdown on culture war issues. That said, there are topics apparently left undiscussed: a new war on LGBT people in Russia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, not to mention that elephant in the room with all things Francis, what freedom means for half the world’s population, women. Obama and K…
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…ly than they’d been accustomed to doing. Scholars argue whether or not the New Deal helped or hindered the nation’s recovery, and if it fundamentally altered or safeguarded capitalism, yet its influence on American values and identity shaped successive generations. Alongside older notions of self-help and limited government, the New Deal fostered acceptance of a strong centralized state actively involved with its citizens’ material well-being. The…
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…that Democrats need to get better at telling stories than at crunching the numbers, in this battle of the budget, the numbers actually matter. Hell, it’s a fight about numbers. And balance. And the virtue of justice. What this latest budget battle, and the question of raising the debt ceiling, and the straw polls are revealing, is just how Tertullian a wing of the Republican Party has become. It not only offers absurd arguments with a straight fac…
Read More…ell as the appeal to “remove the veil from their hearts.” According to the New York Times, the new prayer may be translated as follows: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” The prayer also expresses hope that “all Israel may be saved.” What many may not realize is that both the old and the new Good Friday prayers are citing the apostle Paul. The re…
Read More…o Fosdick, as Christians had always done in the past when they encountered new truths. “The new knowledge and the old faith [have] to be blended in a new combination,” Fosdick argued in his famous 1922 sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”—a new combination that for Fosdick demanded a Christianity without a virgin birth or literal second coming of Christ (among other things), which, he argued, were impossible to believe in, in this new scientif…
Read More…civil unions. These developments please a lot of people; the press gets a new narrative and the Democrats eye a widening pool of potential evangelical voters. Two recent books, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right by E.J. Dionne and The Party Faithful: How And Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap by Amy Sullivan, both describe a changing situation in which evangelicals and other serious religious people will not au…
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…nother VHP of America affiliate, Vibhuti Jha, also ran for state office in New York in 2022 as a Republican, and has become a close associate of the infamous anti-Muslim ideologue Robert Spencer, who is a recurring guest on his popular talk show, and has found in the Hindu far-right a pathway to renewing a flagging audience. As a consequence, Hindu supremacist positions are increasingly taking on a partisan hue. The VHP of America’s advocacy wing…
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…h, Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan administrations, and beyond. Racism is not new. Misogyny is not new. Xenophobia is not new. Our government’s continued alliances with fascists and theocrats? Not new. The things marginalized people are fighting today are frightening because their consequences are in our present and we can foresee further harm—but we must remember our past. I have spent a lot of time since November talking with people who grew up dur…
Read MoreThe Answers in Genesis folks unveiled plans for a new $150 million creationist theme park for northern Kentucky this morning and it’s going to feature a giant ark based on the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood. Answers in Genesis is the not-for-profit apologetics organization that built the Creation Museum, a 70,000 square-foot building devoted to the idea that everything in the bible is literally true and that evolution is a lie. As a…
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