Religion Dispatches
…t need no stinkin’ permits: The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida continues its plan to burn Qur’ans on 9/11 despite not having a fire permit. A Christian milita that had planned to provide protection for the church has withdrawn its support. The group, Right Wing Extreme, says the burning “does not glorify God.” Who knew national Go Topless Day (August 26th in case you’d like to join in) had religious roots? Turns out the event i…
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…s base over the past few years, as Trump and other Republican leaders like Florida governor Ron DeSantis have shattered political norms and vigorously pursued the culture-warring objectives of the raging Christian Right. That marriage between conservative, mostly White Christianity and a Republican Party gleefully trampling the rights of queer people and women seems unlikely to end any time soon. And so long as that continues, we will probably con…
Read More…ethics and law at the Adventist University of Health Sciences in Orlando, Florida. “I have been steeped in the Carson biography for 30 years,” Hines added. While Carson and his biography have been “pervasive” for black Adventists, said Hines, white Adventists have discovered him more recently—in politics. While some conservative Adventists may be drawn to him, “black liberals are pulling away,” said Hines. Carson’s fusion of religion and American…
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…cede his own lost election. The elder Bolsonaro is currently hiding out in Florida, staying at the home of a mixed-martial-arts fighter and eating KFC, in order to evade arrest in Brazil, while calls for Attorney General Merrick Garland to extradite him to Brazil have been getting louder from Democratic lawmakers and legal experts. Lula’s swift crackdown on the attackers stands in stark contrast to the U.S.’s hesitant, cautious response to the att…
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As Julie reported yesterday, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson ran an ad against his Republican opponent, Dan Webster, calling him “Taliban Dan,” and pointing to statements he made to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) about wives’ submission to their husbands — a topic covered authoritatively by RD contributor Kathryn Joyce in her book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. As Adam Serwer reported this morning at Greg Sarg…
Read More…on his own shady business practices. This article prompted a follow-up in Florida. The strength of the local reporting reveals the vested economic interests in perpetuating a conflict narrative with Muslims in America. Unfortunately, the national media has a harder time wrapping itself around that narrative. NPR’s Intelligence Squared debate asked whether “Islam was a religion of peace?”, as though that couldn’t be asked of any religion. Interest…
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…instream, as was recently evident with the planned Qur’an burning in North Florida. While the church itself came from the fringe, it certainly resonated throughout American culture due, most likely, to a much larger and more widespread fear and hatred of Muslims. Hate can also bring the religious mainstream out into the convoluted lives of marginal characters who can inflict awful harm on those singled out as objects of hatred; as is the case in t…
Read More…-again Christians selected Romney, compared to 38% of non-evangelicals. In Florida, the favorability gap was 18%. In Ohio, it was 14%. In Alabama, it was 7%. And in Mississippi, where Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum battled to a nearly three-way split, the favorability gap was down to 4%. So what’s happening? Perhaps reticence about or antipathy towards Mormonism is more broadly distributed among Southern Republicans, including mainline Christians,…
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…not usually identified as an apostle in news stories, is Mario Bramnick of Florida, who describes himself as “part of Apostle Guillermo Maldonado’s Supernatural Global Network.” Apostle Bramnick was a member of President Trump’s 2020 campaign Faith Advisory Board and is President of the Latino Coalition for Israel, which seeks to be the largest Hispanic Pro-Israel organization in America. (For his part, Apostle Maldonado hosted the launch event fo…
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…how people try to differentiate between the Palestinians and Hamas,” while Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, arguing against allowing Gazan refugees into the US, claimed “if you look at how [Gazans] behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic.” Predictably, the Right fixated on Palestine solidarity protests that were quickly organized across the country. Railing against these “sick meetings” where “sleeper…
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