Religion Dispatches
…and prohibited them the Priesthood,” a position he reaffirmed in a January 16, 1852 statement to the Utah territorial legislature: Any man having one drop of the seed of [Cain]… in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other Prophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ I know it is true and others know it. Another rationale for Mormon discrimination against African Americans was articulated in 1845 by Mormon Apost…
Read More
…“We brought them with no expectations and we were highly pleased with the number who decided Ted is the right man to be of the president of the U.S.” When judging these statements (particularly the words “very diverse,” “significant standing” and “the number”), keep in mind that Barton is known (among evangelicals) for playing fast and loose with facts. Three years ago, the evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson halted publication of one of Barton’s…
Read More
…ted. 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” of potentially violent non-Islamic extremist activity in the United States. So fingers point toward right-wing Christian…
Read More
…e-providers like bakeries and florists, dress-shops, hair salons, and “any number” of other businesses could claim that their services are in fact a form of constitutionally protected artistic practice. “The claim at issue here sounds as if the business can put up a sign in its window that says, ‘We sell cakes for heterosexuals only,’” Melling explained, taking ADF’s logic to its natural conclusion. “There’s an immediate consequence of that, and t…
Read More
…on leads of any poll. Also, as Kilgore points out: National Election Study numbers show that Catholics in recent elections lean more toward Democrats (e.g., showing Obama winning the Catholic vote by 14 points in 2008 and 9 points in 2012) than do the less accurate exit polls [Washington Post writer Aaron] Blake cites, meaning Trump is already at a disadvantage with that demographic. So it’s not clear that Trump’s standing is as catastrophic as th…
Read More
…s who are not connected to churches. Let’s take each of these in turn. Myth 1: A Large and Growing Number of White Evangelical Protestants Do Not Attend Church The general assertion that church attendance has significantly declined among White evangelical Protestants is simply not supported by the evidence. In the general population, church attendance levels have indeed been dropping over the last few decades. However, church attendance levels amo…
Read More
…le 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 qualify for the exemption but for the fact that,…
Read More
…lobal conservative movement in response to international conferences in the 1990s, particularly concerning reproductive or women’s rights, which they feared could affect US law back home. At the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, Pope John Paul II (an early bridge-builder who’d allied himself with Billy Graham and Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1970s) called for interfaith opposition to the conference’s draft program of action…
Read More…ing to me, and not for the same reasons as it may be to you. There are any number of fact-checking errors with this video — the sources are unviewable in detail, and when they are discernible, they refer to journals that have no scholarly backing. There is no German Office report suggesting they will become an “Islamic state by 2050”, only a few sociologists and cultural experts suggested that, not the “German Department of Statistics, but Deutsch…
Read More
…ion by joining other denominations or leaving Christianity altogether. The number of priests and nuns was at an all-time low even before the recent sexual scandals, and the number of self-identified Catholics world-wide keeps declining. Many of those who remain in the Church ignore standard doctrines and believe what they want. How many Catholics disobey Church rules? About as many as the angels dancing on a pinhead. Believers know that Jesus prom…
Read More