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Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…over of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and 1980s. The School never opened its doors. Creating special rights for anti-LGBTQ Christians One of the experts who did not have to Google Johnson was journalist and former RD staff writer Sarah Posner, who first interviewed Johnson in 2007 about his work with the ADF. Posner told RD: “I interviewed [Johnson] about [the ADF’s] ambitions to reverse decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence uphold…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…be a fly on the wall during a private conversation between Lehmann and Finney partisan Marilynne Robinson.) And, finally, a long chapter given over to a detailed exposition of the plot of the “Left Behind” books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins delivered just too much of a muchness to suit this particular reader. These quibbles aside, Lehmann has given us a sobering spiritual biography of a ceaselessly striving people—the powerful tribe of America…

Religious Opposition To LGBT Equality Softening

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rters remain hopeful as the denomination begins its General Assembly in Minneapolis next week. Lisa Larges, head of That All May Freely Serve, said, “Faith traditions are moving toward a new understanding of God’s diverse creation. The time for policies based on our love of God and call to serve has come. Churches are learning to affirm gifts for ministry rather than reject ministers because of whom they chose as a life partner.” Several pro-gay m…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…pokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Cent…

Who Would the Buddha Bomb?

By Danny Fisher

…ational war efforts to instances of monastics taking up arms. (Of course, one need look no further than today’s headlines for evidence of brutality perpetrated by Buddhists: the humanitarian crisis involving Burma’s Rohingya minority has been purposely aggravated by the fanatical monk U Wirathu and his “969 Movement.”) In his book An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, Peter Harvey chalks these seeming inconsistencies between Buddhist peacefulness in…

Updated: G-O-D Plays a Bit Part in First GOP Debate

By Daniel Schultz

…d made this tension more vivid—are several candidates who want to hew to a new line of some kind, only to be pulled back, like the Godfather, into a morass they were trying to escape. Like Beutler says, Republicans haven’t quite figured out what lessons to draw from Mitt Romney’s defeat, which leaves them stuck between the already and the not-yet in this cycle. Should we express sympathy for the plight of the middle class, or should we go full-on…

Mormon Leaders Slam ‘Counterfeit’ Gay Families; Vatican Resists Gay Ambassador; ISIS Executes Man for Homosexuality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…solid majority of mankind still believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman.” Perry’s comments were made at the Annual General Conference, which was held last weekend. Another members of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles, Quorum President Boyd K. Packer, said, “The end of all activity in the church is to see that a man and a woman with their children are happy at home and sealed together for time and for all eternity.” Vat…

What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…factors, including poverty level of the surrounding area and their willingness to generate media exposure for Missouri. In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod congregation, applied for the grant to renovate the playground of a preschool owned and operated by the church. While it ranked highly, Trinity Lutheran was denied the grant because of a department policy that made houses of worship ineligible for funds. Upon learning the reason for th…

Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

By Bradley Onishi

…cs (28%), white Protestants who are not evangelical (26%) and religious “nones” (10%). When Coney Barrett was nominated in September of 2020, Trump’s polling numbers among white evangelicals had dipped to a low of 55% in August 2020. However, once her nomination was made public that number rose to the normal average of 71%. Coney Barrett’s record on reproductive rights was a central issue in her confirmation hearings, as Anna North points out at V…

Boo! Trump’s Lead With Religious Voters Not As Bigly As You Might Think

By Daniel Schultz

…ll still win the demographic handily, but it won’t do him much good. Trump needs to improve on Romney’s scores with white voters in order to keep up with demographic changes in the US. That is, the nation is becoming steadily browner, and Trump, racist and xenophobic to the end, has dug himself a deep hole with that segment. Where else could he get the votes he needs? With white Evangelicals, who are consistently among the GOP’s core voters. But t…