Religion Dispatches
…that black Protestants oppose Trump 89-8, which is nearly the 93-6 edge African-Americans in general gave Obama over Romney. Likewise, Hispanic Catholics favor Clinton 77-16, compared to the overall 71-27 Hispanic vote in 2012. Since both those groups are projected to make up the same portion of the electorate in 2016, if not larger, it might not be white evangelicals or Nones who determine the outcome this November. Don’t look now, Lucy: Charlie…
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…iqueness of either. My aim is to enter into conversation with two black American writers—James Baldwin, who wrote and lived through the time of the Holocaust and American segregation, and contemporary writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic—about the profound and extant points of synthesis between our peoples’ respective stories, and what can be learned therein. If we cannot pursue justice, who are we? When they came to America,…
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…enominational (a category roughly equivalent to mainline) Protestant seminaries derived 37 percent of their revenue from investments and depreciation in 2013, a substantially higher percentage than either Roman Catholic or inter- and non-denominational seminaries. “Even when change has been a long time coming, and even when change has been part of an institution’s history, the end of a seminary as its constituents know it is painful.” Legacy fundi…
Read More….” • Faith-Based Initiative—Justice Dept. opinion could expand religious hiring rights: A June 2007 opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “determined that a federal grant program could exempt a Christian relief organization from a prohibition against hiring only those of its own faith under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA),” the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy recently reported….
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…eeding, with difficult-to-treat infections.” Another doctor had similar horrific memories. “I saw chemical burns, as well as perforations of the bladder, vagina, uterus, and rectum. Some women came in with overwhelming infections or in septic shock.” These are just a fraction of the horrors from the world that Comstock made. In curtailing the information about and access to reproductive health care, misinformation and predacious entrepreneurs thri…
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…natural family planning, which relies on calculating a women’s infertile period during her menstrual cycle and only having sex on those days. The “rhythm method,” as natural family planning was called in the early 1960s, was notoriously unreliable, however, which made it a poor option for women like Cahill who really, really didn’t want another child. The Catholic Church’s absolute ban on modern methods of contraception is inextricably linked to i…
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…ical, often fragile social spell that binds the person to the symbol. Authoritarian rulers such as Trump, however, perform a sleight of hand that simultaneously hides the distinction between candidate and symbol and fuses that projection with the state. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and the Lucid Substack newsletter, notes, an essential attribute of authoritarian rule is “the leader’s claim that he does not just…
Read More…f interrelated issues. The religious left would need to define its agenda priorities clearly and precisely in order to earn concrete policy victories. Nor am I convinced that we should write an obituary for the religious right. As Dionne notes in Souled Out, “The end of the religious right does not signal a decline in evangelical Christianity” (p. 4). Far from it: evangelical Protestantism continues its exponential growth, as close to 30 percent o…
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…ng its social implications—turn their fire on Christians. British science writer Richard Dawkins leads this pack. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins takes aim at what he calls “redneck” creationists and “their disturbingly successful fight to subvert American education and textbook publishing.” Focusing on the philosophical heart of creationism rather than simple biblical literalism, Dawkins challenges the very notion of purposeful design in nature,…
Read More…le’s private hearts and minds, and moving people out of the pews across America. The number of nones (people with no religious preference) is on the rise, with over 20% of all Americans claiming this status, and many point to the increased politicization of religion as the cause. This trend of legal victories will, in the long run, very likely create a more secular America. Recent data indicate that this process is already clearly under way. A pol…
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