Religion Dispatches
…for Pain in Iowa or South Carolina, although they more obviously could in Florida. Frum, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, complains in his column that Palin snubbed the group’s offers to sponsor her Israel trip, as it has done for other presidential hopefuls, instead booking it through a Christian tour agency. He thinks, perhaps, that Palin is miffed that he and other RJC board members have been critical of her, but that she’s unwise t…
Read More
…e all there. People came from all over the country: Louisiana, California, Florida. We drank and ate and discussed our families, our work and our vacations. We rehashed funny and poignant moments from the trial and board meetings. It was a community effort and just as during the trial, everyone played to their strengths. Kevin Padian, who during the trial testified to the wealth of information about evolution in the fossil record, manned the grill…
Read More…e a letter thanking the Pope for denouncing the planned Qur’an burnings in Florida. In the wake of recent teen bullying, Christian group Exodus International has decided to pull its support of the “Day of Truth,” an event that encourages school students to “counter the promotion of homosexual behavior.” As of Wednesday, Focus on the Family was standing by the event. As the Major League playoffs get started, Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton relies on h…
Read More…ball league is attracting Jewish American players skipped over by the NBA. Florida Marlins baseball manager Jack McKeon prays to St. Thérèse during the national anthem before every game. Do you speak the Christian lingo? The Air Force has suspended an ethics briefing for missile launch commanders that relied heavily on Christian doctrines. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will exhibit a set of Rembrandt’s paintings of Jesus that have hitherto never…
Read More
…and articles that tried to claim Jesus as the original punk. A student in Florida was suspended from school for distributing the zine, in part because the principal misunderstood what the art signified—he was afraid it was blasphemous. The 700 Club featured the suspended student because they felt his religious rights were violated by the school. This was one of the moments where political and cultural activism intersected. You remain quite object…
Read More
…a kind of biblical vigilante assassin—who was executed for the murder of a Florida abortion provider and his security escort. Hill also believed in the need for militias and for a theocratic Christian revolution. But one would not know all that to read mainstream press accounts. And while the sentencing was massively covered by national and international media, it would have been fair to describe Roeder as a “Christian terrorist,” though the media…
Read More…a, has taken up the Santorum mantle, asserting in an interview on Orlando, Florida’s WORL that gay unions could lead to “man-horse” wedding ceremonies: “You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy,’” Hayworth said. “Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I gue…
Read More…hey have gotten legislators to introduce bills in states such as Missouri, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana advocating for academic freedom to teach “the controversy” regarding scientific issues like evolutionary theory. (Note: In the scientific community, there is no controversy over the reality of evolutionary processes.) So far, only Louisiana has taken the bait and passed an academic freedom law. Now it seems the reality o…
Read More…on Post reported this morning that a Republican congressional candidate in Florida, Allen West, a retired mililtary officer, issued a statement on the massacre headlined “Terrorists Are Infiltrating the Military.” Muslim groups were quick to condemn the shootings — as if they were obligated to much a special effort to do so merely because the alleged shooter was Muslim. The Muslim Public Affairs Council-DC, the Islamic Society of North America Off…
Read More…The president was not speaking to a labor union in Ohio or to teachers in Florida—he was speaking to a joint session of Congress, a ritualized setting that invokes all the sacredness of the democratic government of the United States of America. Americans tend to watch such speeches together—as families, in restaurants, in bars. For a few moments, a significant portion of the nation is gathered, if only via television, into a ritual moment. These…
Read More