Religion Dispatches
…tion is key to the survival of any media figure: just ask Madonna. And his latest move from connect-the-dots-conspiracy-theorist to ecumenical revivalist seems to be working for Beck. Part of what’s fueling the new surge of talk about Beck is the fact that he has cannily plugged right into a thorny theological issue: the question—important to evangelical Christians—of whether Mormons are actually Christians. A Pew Forum survey in 2008 showed that…
Read More…are the activist leaders who help fan this grassroots support? Look at the latest anti-gay robocall in Michigan, and you’ll see a line straight from the American Family Association’s radical homophobia to Mike Huckabee. In the robocall, reported by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, the head of AFA’s Michigan affiliate, Gary Glenn, and its affiliated Campaign for Michigan Families, repeatedly describes his target, Democratic state legislative candi…
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…conservative group who will advise the pope and select his successor. This latest crop includes more Italian cardinals than those from developing countries even though the so-called “Third World” is where Catholicism is growing. Things change slowly if at all in Rome. But the not-so-coincidental similarities in the cardinals’ respective paths to the red hats, eventually to the conclave, and perhaps even to the papacy itself, make for a cautionary…
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…lah with fear and paranoia, it makes perfect sense that they’ve become its latest victims. Which is especially sad because, as too many Pakistanis seem to have forgotten, love is in fact at the heart of the spiritual ethos upon which the country was founded. Per the words of the poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal, in Masjid-e-Qurtaba: “Love is the holy prophet, love is the word of God.” A dogmatic theology stripped of its spirituality necessarily lacks…
Read More…d Paul, uses reporting from a GQ article about Paul’s college days, in his latest political ad: According to the August GQ piece, as a student at Baylor University, Paul, among other things, belonged to a secret society called NoZe, which aspired to blasphemy, and, while stoned, kidnapped a woman, tied her up, and demanded that she worship the Aqua Buddha. (Paul has denied kidnapping anyone, but the GQ piece has photos of him with his NoZe brother…
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The much publicized Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, heavily promoted by the Obama Administration, seem to have gone the way of earlier negotiations—that is, nowhere. The Palestinian leadership has called for the suspension of all talks until the Israelis freeze settlement activity, a political move that Netanyahu’s coalition could not make and survive politically since the right wing of his coalition will brook no talk of territorial concessions…
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…e-level membership. Which is about as interesting to me as Kate Gosselin’s latest makeover. But the b-o-r-i-n-g world of Kody Brown and family may in fact be a tremendous blessing to the broader community of 40,000 plus Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, most of whom have been struggling to get out from under PR havoc wreaked by the exploits of monomaniacal FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and his now infamous exploits in underage arranged marriage and wa…
Read MoreIn the latest installment of RD’s collaboration with Bloggingheads.tv, associate editor Sarah Posner and The American Conservative contributing editor Michael Brendan Dougherty talk about the overemphasis on Qur’an burning over other forms of Islamophobia, whether the Pope should be arrested, and religion in the tea party movement. Also: is the tea party’s demise imminent? To view the whole ‘diavlog’ click below. To view separate clips go to the…
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…sor to the president and therefore must be proved to be anti-American. The latest attack is against Hunter, another pastor in Obama’s inner circle, and it is so dumb, false, and rooted in the every-Muslim-must-be-a-terrorist mania that no doubt it will eventually penetrate the conservative consciousness. The theme of Hunter’s book, A New Kind of Conservative, is the blandly inoffensive notion that someone can be conservative and nice at the same t…
Read More…. the dreaded “Ground Zero Mosque”) is still embroiled in controversy. The latest blocking strategy has been to apply for landmark status for the current building on the site. Echoing the Temecula Baptists, US Representative Peter King said, “It’s a house of worship, but we are at war with al-Qaida.” King also argued that it was a bad time for Muslims to build a mosque. “Right at this moment in history, it’s bad form to put it there.” Want to bloc…
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