Religion Dispatches
…Board of Rabbis issued a statement against the hospital policy. So did the New York Protestant Council. The Diocese of New York fought to keep the policy as it was. After a 4 month fight, the Board of Hospitals agreed to change the policy, meaning that birth control would be allowed in the public hospitals of New York City. There were many fights like that. But in this current controversy, only one religious voice is being heard despite the fact t…
Read More…thinks creationism should be taught in the public schools. As part of the new project, AIG and Ark Encounter also say they are seeking tax breaks from the state, an announcement which has raised the eyebrows of constitutional watchdogs. According to the Courier-Journal: Gov. Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson declined to answer questions Tuesday about possible incentives for the project. The developers are seeking incentives under the Kentucky…
Read MoreFocus on the Family can hardly contain its glee over a new study that purports to show that “children raised by homosexual parents are dramatically more likely than peers raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from a host of social problems.” Calling this study “the gold standard” of same-sex parenting studies, FoF’s affiliate CitizenLink crowed that among those “social problems” were “strong tendencies, as adults, to exhibit poor impuls…
Read More…ion. Perhaps in the wake of the tragedy in Ferguson there will be a renewed vigor from progressive churches that will help repair old coalitions, build new ones, and tell a new story about who gets to speak “for religious people.”…
Read More…s might have talked about peace and poverty, but Francis’s much-discussed “new tone” seems like a permission slip for Democrats to talk religion without a full scale showdown on culture war issues. That said, there are topics apparently left undiscussed: a new war on LGBT people in Russia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, not to mention that elephant in the room with all things Francis, what freedom means for half the world’s population, women. Obama and K…
Read MoreAn old friend expressed confusion last night after reading the new Pew Research Poll focusing on white evangelicals. “Where’s the surprise?” he asked. There is no surprise. Not much, anyway. What we have here is a case of Lucy managing to pull the football out from under poor old Charlie Brown, again. We go through this every four years: there’s a flurry of articles wondering Is This The End Of The Religious Right?, pointing to the emergence of a…
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…ly than they’d been accustomed to doing. Scholars argue whether or not the New Deal helped or hindered the nation’s recovery, and if it fundamentally altered or safeguarded capitalism, yet its influence on American values and identity shaped successive generations. Alongside older notions of self-help and limited government, the New Deal fostered acceptance of a strong centralized state actively involved with its citizens’ material well-being. The…
Read More…civil unions. These developments please a lot of people; the press gets a new narrative and the Democrats eye a widening pool of potential evangelical voters. Two recent books, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right by E.J. Dionne and The Party Faithful: How And Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap by Amy Sullivan, both describe a changing situation in which evangelicals and other serious religious people will not au…
Read More…ell as the appeal to “remove the veil from their hearts.” According to the New York Times, the new prayer may be translated as follows: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” The prayer also expresses hope that “all Israel may be saved.” What many may not realize is that both the old and the new Good Friday prayers are citing the apostle Paul. The re…
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…nother VHP of America affiliate, Vibhuti Jha, also ran for state office in New York in 2022 as a Republican, and has become a close associate of the infamous anti-Muslim ideologue Robert Spencer, who is a recurring guest on his popular talk show, and has found in the Hindu far-right a pathway to renewing a flagging audience. As a consequence, Hindu supremacist positions are increasingly taking on a partisan hue. The VHP of America’s advocacy wing…
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