Religion Dispatches
…also been a supporter. Other Republicans, like Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, are also supporting LGBT people from within the party. Ros-Lehtinen has become the first Republican to co-sponsor a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. She has long been a supporter of the community, serving as vice-chair of the House LGBT Equality Caucus. She recently spoke before the Log Cabin Republicans, telling them that marriage equality is a Republic…
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…ed from North America to Europe, South America, and the Philippines, met a number of politically powerful Republican politicians and conservative religious leaders, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Iran/Contra figure Oliver North, and then-Senator Rick Santorum. Religious leaders like Charles Stanley (a former distributor), Dr. Robert Schuller and the late Dr. D. James Kennedy of Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries—a multimedia, m…
Read More…aders expressed regard for the LGBT community affected by the slaughter in Florida. The contrast with the 2009 resolution was remarkable. Far less noted, but an equally important indicator of sentiments among evangelicals is one of the two lengthiest resolutions passed at the St. Louis meeting. Its assumptions stood in accord with the framework for public argument adopted by a variety of evangelical and Catholic groups: religious freedom defined a…
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…unite church and state. Panic over school curricula and books have led to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Historically conservative churches, such as the Orthodox Church, are seeing an increase in radical traditionalists converting to the faith and bringing with them dangerous, even violent ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. It’s within the cultural context of a surging far-right politics and violence in the United States that we find relig…
Read More…hot a young, unarmed African-American man named Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, is known to police, and remains free. “My son is your son,” Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton told demonstrators in New York City on Wednesday evening. While I’m fully aware of the vulnerability of my own children, I also think about the ways my friends who are African American must raise their children, especially sons, with an ever-heightened…
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Today Newt Gingrich made an appearance at River Church in Tampa, Florida, pastored by Rodney Howard Browne. Slate’s Dave Weigel tweeted that in introducing Gingrich, Browne prayed that America “will not allow the killing of unborn babies, and the takeover of Islam” and “the Constitution that we have, and your word, and Jesus is the only way we can be delivered from this plight.” Browne is no inconsequential—or uncontroversial—figure in the world…
Read More…y try to do something. Of course, as his final humiliation at the hands of Florida voters shows, it’s hard to build a relationship with your constituents when you run on the pretense of going to Washington and not doing anything for them. Of course, Ted Cruz is an even a bigger advocate of tearing the government down, and he won his state of Texas and almost 2.5 times the number of delegates. But just as Donald Trump has found his constituency amo…
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…n of the RNC and manager of George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, and Florida governor Charlie Crist, a presidential hopeful who pushed for his state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2008), American politics produces a distinctive cohort that excels at manipulating the darker impulses of their followers, patrons and constituents precisely because their own ambitions take shape in the shadows of the closet. It’s not difficult to see why these two…
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…ty leader Mitch McConnell’s side, a task he takes on proudly with Paul and Florida’s new Senator, Marco Rubio, who is a favorite with social conservatives and signed on with Christian nation mythologist David Barton. DeMint, of course, is one of those Republicans who is very much a Washington insider but disingenuously claims (for Tea Party-cred) to be a renegade fighting it from the outside. But DeMint is a religious right hero first. DeMint thin…
Read More…ame when he decided her headscarf posed a choking danger on the court. The Florida pastor who threatened to burn Qur’ans has been banned from Great Britain. Operation Rescue founder and veteran anti-choice activist Randall Terry is planning to air graphic anti-abortion ads during the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, FOX has rejected a Super Bowl ad from an online store named “Jesus Hates Obama.” Was Mark Twain anti-Christian? Philip Yancey, an Evangelical w…
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