Religion Dispatches
…groups on Israeli-Palestinian issues. In addition, he was the author of a number of books, the latest of which urged the United States to get muscular with Iran. In February, after being courted by Team McCain for more than in year, Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for the presidency. Then Talk2Action’s Bruce Wilson got busy. He delved into the pastor’s sermons, his writing and public commentaries. Wilson found that Hagee’s sermons were riddled wi…
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…nter, has ties to white supremacist organizations. Regardless of these clunky historical facts, Obama’s presidency and the GOP’s dismaying efforts to appeal to “the hip-hop generation” appear to have prompted resurgent interest in these arguments as a race-conscious update to the anti-abortion message. Since late December, a number of anti-abortion organizations have made public and prominent hires of activists who frame their anti-abortion work i…
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…onfidence, never mind an actual panic. But that is what has happened. The sky is falling. The floor has dropped. “Fannie and Freddie” pulled the rug out from under the rest of us. It is panic time, and economics is now decidedly a subfield of social psychology. Now, a conservative like David Brooks, whose candor and commitment to principle is laudable, believes himself to be a “policy wonk”; he likes speeches, and even politicians, who are “wonky.…
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…uing a host of Obama missteps including complaints about the reversal of a number of Bush administration executive orders. Conservative evangelical leaders will engage in a spirited and steadfast attempt to rebuild and reinvigorate a wounded movement, leading to the US Postal Service and direct-mail companies experiencing a surge in business as urgent fundraising appeals pepper the mailboxes and inboxes of religious right supporters. At its worst—…
Read More…venue in 2007. Americans United points out on its website that there are a number of other important religious right organizations to be aware of, including Gary Bauer’s American Values, Rick Scarborough’s Vision America, and Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. An expanded version of the Church & State story is available here. ++++++++++ New Coalition takes on Christian Zionism Before the end of the year, the Los Angeles Times reported in…
Read More…uzzFeed’s Lester Feder. Armenia: Folk dancing group kicks out gay American Kyle Khandikyan, a 23-year old American living in Armenia was kicked out of a folk dancing group after the instructor learned that he was gay. Khandikyan, who currently lives in Yerevan and first came to Armenia through Birthright Armenia as a volunteer with PINK Armenian, was told by the instructor that he did not belong to this “nation,” that he was “not Armenian,” and ha…
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…ists. From the Ten Commandments, to the ten avatars of Vishnu (Krishna was number eight), to Buddhism’s ten precepts, religions are all about systems, ethical prescriptions—or proscriptions—and grand schemes. Order out of chaos is the name of the game. All this to suggest that the Top Ten list is obviously something deeply ingrained in the human experience. So here, without further preamble, RD’s picks for the Ten Best of 2008’s Religion Top Ten l…
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…o, like those men of old, know what to do.” DeMoss has collaborated with a number of her fellow speakers before. In 2002, she edited a compilation of essays on submission and headship entitled Biblical Womanhood in the Home, which drew contributions from Kassian, Hunt, and other complementarian matriarchs, such as Dorothy Kelley Patterson, who with her husband, Paige Patterson, created the homemaking degree and curriculum introduced at Southwester…
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…The Christmas Wars.” ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Rick Warren 101: If you were lucky, none of your holiday gatherings, dinners, gift exchanges, meet-ups, e-mail, or twitter posts were sprinkled with talk of Pastor Rick Warren. The Saddleback Church Pastor whose name was for years pretty much confined to the musings of religious cognoscente, has burst out of that ghetto, big time. Due to right-wing clatter, I was moved to repost a long piece about Warren…
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…and analyses of popular cultural examples, I would have liked to discuss a number of other issues that are triggers for body shame because they involve physical experiences in which we have no (or limited) control. Menstruation, skin tone and complexion, and body hair are just a few examples of topics the book doesn’t delve into because the scope of issues it does cover (i.e., disability, weight, chronic pain and illness, and aging) is already imp…
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