Religion Dispatches
…morial Day weekend Trump appeared at the annual “Rolling Thunder” rally in Washington, D.C., an event organized initially in the late 1980s, and since the mid-1990s an incorporated organization which stages the annual motorcycle rally (at one point attracting 350,000 bikers). The organization advocates for the cause of veterans, although its initial (and still active) impetus, as The Economist magazine put it, was to advance a specific crackpot be…
Read More…religious groups are boosting their visibility in pride celebrations. The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein noted the trend on the eve of D.C.’s Capital Pride celebration this past weekend: Organizers of this weekend’s Capital Pride named 14 faith-based groups participating in Sunday’s festival for the first time. They include Baptist, Lutheran and Quaker churches as well as the country’s largest Buddhist denomination, a Conservative synagogue…
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…This showed recently when Donald Trump made a visit to a politics forum in Washington sponsored by the evangelical organization United in Purpose. Trump’s widely-quoted declaration: “…we really don’t know anything about Hillary in terms of religion….” A variety of media voices noted that we do, in fact, know quite a bit about Hilary and religion. (Here’s an example from Politifact.) So what did Trump mean, exactly? The mood in the room indicated h…
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…Which one? Why? One recent book I’ve read that I really admire is Harriet Washington’s exhaustively researched Medical Apartheid. Washington nails how legacies of scientific racism and white supremacist medical experimentation inform contemporary perspectives on the black body. What’s your next book? A novel based on the 1978 Jonestown massacre (from the perspective of two black women protagonists) and an anthology entitled Women of Color Beyon…
Read More…al Church could not take with them the historic Falls Church, where George Washington was once vestryman. The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein has the details about this ruling and its larger context: Similar disputes have roiled Episcopal churches around the country and other parts of mainline Christianity, not only on questions of gay equality but also more secular issues related to property rights. The Virginia dispute also became an issue…
Read More…iest to Washington’s conservative establishment.” McCloskey is currently a fellow with the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC….
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…ists—really reliable and legitimate? Stein gets this. That’s why, when the Washington Post asked her about vaccines, she said that they were “an invaluable medication”—and then immediately pivoted to talk about the untrustworthiness of the FDA, the CDC, and other federal regulatory agencies that oversee public health. She cited the corrupting influence of corporations, and then went on to invoke a favorite demon: “Monsanto lobbyists run the day in…
Read More…erg came closest to addressing this question, likening Carson to Booker T. Washington. Graham also zeroes in on the conservative star-making machinery, and draws interesting comparisons between the rise of Carson and that of Herman Cain. Carson, of course, won’t give a straight answer about his political aspirations, saying this weekend he’d leave his future in politics “up to God.” Isn’t invoking God’s plan for your future the last step right bef…
Read More…pus Dei priest Father C. John McCloskey, who is credited with converting a number of influential Republicans to Catholicism, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Sam Brownback, Robert Bork and Larry Kudlow, has advocated just such a solution: McCloskey told columnist Terry Mattingly in July 2013 that “the United States is no longer a Christian country.” Because this is so, he explained, traditionalists will need to…
Read More…e because her doctor only has admitting privileges at Genesys, reports the Washington Post. While Catholic hospitals routinely refuse to perform contraception sterilization, some make an exception for women with severe health conditions or who are having a planned C-section because it allows them to avoid the risks of a second surgery at a later date. “When the woman’s physician can make a strong case to a hospital ethics board, sometimes the proc…
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