Religion Dispatches
…hers.” According to D’Agostino, Hanna pledged that the organization would “promote a positive political philosophy based upon respect for constitutional principles, economic freedom and traditional values. We think that Americans are basically positive and optimistic, and want to be inspired rather than repelled by politics. That’s why Let Freedom Ring will not engage in negative personal or partisan political attacks.” D’Agostino also cited an in…
Read More
…usalem is still disputed territory, and so the State Department refuses to list Israel as the child’s country of birth. In 2002, Congress passed a law requiring the State Department to end this charade. But, in accordance with the terms of the gentleman’s agreement, the State Department simply refused to enforce the law. Now in reality, this is absurd. I lived in (West) Jerusalem for three years, and it’s as Israeli as the cellphone. Moreover, whi…
Read More
…ernet and conservative talk radio. The elite scapegoats for right-wing populists today are liberals and Democrats trying to pass “socialist” health care schemes as a first step toward a totalitarian fascist society. The scapegoats lower on the socio-economic ladder are immigrants, community organizers, and Muslims. Last fall in Boise, I ran into the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, of which I am a card-carrying membe…
Read More…y for them, as evidenced most recently by the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List’s California Latino voter education effort and the Vota Tus Valores campaign. But it’s curious that Grandin cites as his case in point for moveable Latino evangelicals the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Rodriguez, despite his own claims to be more of a moderate or at least a free agent, is already entrenched in the…
Read More
…st of the authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism, and threats to our pluralist democracy. We can learn from their experience by listening to their stories. There are many groups out there working to limit the power of religion in our government, to keep state and church separate, and to fight Christian Nationalism, that can amplify these voices and which exvangelicals could contribute to in other ways: the Secular Student Alliance, the Freedom Fr…
Read More
…et traders gyrate between exultation and despair as corner-office titans enlist the administration’s Objectivists to refill the trillion-dollar cookie jar they’d raided and stocked with imaginary cookies. Has anyone counted the dead in Iraq? Lapel pins, real Americans, water-boarding and what the frak is a credit-default swap anyway? A wise old Zen master boiled the Dharma down to this: Don’t deceive yourself, don’t make excuses and take responsib…
Read More
…i and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. According to the client list on its web site, Eleison Group has also represented FPL.* Secular pro-choice groups have expressed shock that Stupak’s amendment made it in at the last minute. But to Butler, it was no surprise. “We saw the problem coming,” she told RD. “Capps wasn’t working as a compromise.” Stupak and his group of 40 “felt dissed,” said Butler, but because FPL doesn’t lobby on the Hi…
Read More…aving aside the fact that the United States consistently ranks high on the list of the countries with the most religious freedom, you would think that conservative Catholic leaders who have been behind the promotion of the idea that we are undergoing a sustained assault on religious freedom would be ecstatic at Trump’s defense of “religious liberty.” But no. Princeton University professor Robert George, who has been one of the most influential thi…
Read More
…important work. Among them is Joanna Brooks, who served as the Mormon panelist at the conference. She has been an advocate for LGBTQ equality and acceptance among Mormons and more broadly (in fact, she was featured earlier this year in The Advocate’s list of “10 Pro-LGBTQ Religious Women You Should Know”), and I am glad for her work. We may not agree on certain issues, including whether or not there is a God, but she has my support. Her activism,…
Read More…Uganda” over the bill, I asked him how the U.N. and other “lobbyists” were promoting homosexuality in Uganda; not surprisingly, he didn’t have an answer. He claimed that the pastors there told him “a story about how it swept into — the agenda promotion, of the agenda, and now the actual proliferation of the homosexual activity sweeping into the boarding schools of that nation. I don’t know much of the details so I can’t take responsibility for wha…
Read More