Religion Dispatches
…that there’s nothing in a Christian nationalist-laden KJV Bible that will critically, much less sincerely, work to repair the most crippling effects of the Black experience that originated with chattel slavery? If so, at least we can say that, in this respect at least, their honesty is refreshing….
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…scribed by their alleged feelings not by common identity. At issue is not what people feel, but what the institutional Roman Catholic Church’s destructive teachings on same-sex love do. For instance, some teen suicides can be traced to them. Then, a few weeks later, out comes the blessings document as a sop to the Left. Conservatives felt blindsided. Progressives were all over the map, from praise that it’s a gift to scorn that it’s an insulting t…
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…last year until now, there’s been a steady, persistent attempt to do just that. And much of that pressure was directed toward Mike Johnson. The number of stories about Russian persecution of evangelicals appearing in the religion press increased. A good example of this can be found in The Baptist Press—their Ukraine coverage increased in its political content, urgency, and frequency beginning in the autumn of 2023 through this spring. And this tre…
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…way the government talks about it. Even the construction of “Muslim rage”—what is the purpose of that construction? We know: it’s to construct Muslims as inherently angry and rageful with no explanation for their anger. And because we cannot find a reason, the only solution or intervention is brute force. “The U.S. continues to insist on a mythical narrative about what kind of country this is: that it inflicts violence for good reasons.” You wrote…
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…ion stance, given the public backlash against their policies. Amid recent chatter that Republicans might soften the language on abortion, the RNC released its 2024 platform two days ago which gives zero indication that the GOP has “softened” its position in any meaningful way. “[T]he RNC is committing to ensure embryos have rights equal to a full human person,” writes law professor Liz Sepper on Twitter. Members of the “Post-Dobbs” panel were stil…
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…wars.” It’s notable that men and women’s attendance equaled out in 2012. That was the year that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) launched its “religious liberty” drive against covering contraceptives in the Affordable Care Act, a campaign that soon drew support from evangelicals and resulted in the stunning Hobby Lobby decision to allow employers to deny birth control to women who work for them. College-educated women’s church attend…
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…al questions arise: Will marriage licenses issued by Texas between 2015 and 2024 still be legal? What about military couples stationed in Texas? The situation becomes even more grim when you look at the bigger picture of where we’re going. What happens when Lawrence vs. Texas falls next? Or if the courts decide that “community morals” are sufficient to decide that all LGBT-related material is obscene? Republicans are already talking about making i…
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…d for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. There is absolutely no reason to think that will change in 2024. Instead of suggesting that there might be some significant section of (White) “faith” voters who can be reached given that fewer than half of White evangelicals view Trump as a “somewhat religious” man (6% of them deem him “very religious”), one should pause here to ask how the distinctive faith of these demographics affects their vote—particularly…
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…break of war—have thus far dampened Democratic turnout. Trump understands that if the abortion issue dominates the 2024 campaign, his bid may well be doomed. So he’s seeking to elicit a reaction so visceral and powerful that it overshadows abortion rights. This is precisely what making the election about his use of fascist tropes would accomplish. The 2024 election will either be about abortion rights, or it will be about Trump. One way or another…
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…much as a political crisis. On the one side is an aging, dwindling group that asserts that its understanding of God blesses and endorses a traditionalist social order. On the other is a more diverse, more secular group suspicious of authoritarian faith and the ways in which invocations of religious values privilege inequality and repression. The 2024 campaign will be finally a decision about which of these views should dominate and which candidat…
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