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Why Don’t Republicans Want to Allow Pastors to Endorse from Pulpit?

By Daniel Silliman

…s will come to nothing. The non-partisan GovTrack, an open government data site, puts the likelihood of HR 153 becoming a law at zero percent. This bill will never come to a vote, probably, disappearing into the Ways and Means committee never to be heard from again. The question is: why aren’t Republicans supporting it? Religious conservatives are rallying around religious liberty issues, including the rights of churches to get involved in politic…

Crying Witch: Learning From the O’Donnell “Dabbling” Debacle

By Spencer Dew

…those of us interested in religion, the strange midnight picnic becomes a site for untangling confusions about religious practice and religious terms. What is a Witch? O’Donnell’s jokey comments draw from the well of popular cultural ideas about witches and witchcraft, conceptions shaped in large part by fiction, theater, movies, and television; from Shakespeare to Frank Baum to J.K. Rowling. Intentional or not, O’Donnell’s invocation of fictiona…

Apocalypse Left and Right: A Graphic Primer

By Dan Archer

…can Party. Panel 5: View a clip of Paula Zahn Now at the Media Matters Web site. Panel 1 – See Glenn Scherer’s excellent 2004 article from Grist, “Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment.” Panels 2 and 3: See America’s Providential History Amazon page for more information. Panel 5: The full title of the book is Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-life Politics. Read it online via Google books he…

Virtual Islam: Peace, Love, and Some Understanding?

By Bill Berkowitz

…of the people we met in Second Life crossed the gamut of professions: Web site news editors, librarians, architects, stay-at-home moms, teachers, lawyers, college students, journalists, writers, counselors, clerics, bloggers. The new economy—or the one that is transforming into a new economy as we are all witnessing—is redefining “common.” Against the backdrop of the repeated failed efforts by the Bush administration at public diplomacy, where do…

Conservative Activist Says Tea Party Movement Needs “Reverence to God”

By Sarah Posner

…on from our reverence to God.” Hardage is the founder of tvTownhall, a web site which broadcast a counter-State of the Union earlier this month and plans to broadcast other programs like Ron Luce’s Battle Cry, National Day of Prayer events, as well as videos by citizen journalists of congressional and candidate town halls. Hardage also organized last month’s National Strike: “we the people strike back against an out of control government.” At this…

Correction: The SBC Does NOT Oppose Women’s Ordination… Just Women Pastors

By Caroline Matas

…again in conservative American evangelicalism where one must conduct a website treasure hunt to determine that a tagline like “everybody welcome” does not mean that, for example, same-sex couples will be welcomed as a valued iteration of sacred human partnership. Such ambiguity is deeply painful (and potentially even dangerous) for LGBTQ people and their loved ones, who might accept the invitation to a “welcoming” church only to be told that bein…

Does Romney’s Religion Condone Torture? [UPDATED]

By Joanna Brooks

…ding to be torture, Romney responded “I don’t.” Romney’s stance led one UN official to warn last week that his election would amount to “a democratic mandate for torture.” While some LDS media observers have denied a pattern of Mormon involvement in torture, others in the Mormon community have called for closer consideration of this serious moral and ethical matter. And it does matter. It matters because unlike in most contemporary American religi…

Will 2018 Be the Year of Catholic Health Care Dominance?

By Patricia Miller

…m, including an Oklahoma practice owned by Ascension. For now, Ascension’s official policy appears to be that it will “tolerate” the prescription of contraceptives by individual physicians under its purview, but that could change at any time. Catholic hospitals are also entering anther front in the culture wars by refusing to provide gender-reassignment surgery for trans individuals. According to the ERDs, in addition to specific services that are…

‘Religious Freedom’: Constitutional Principle or Electoral Politics?

By Frances Kissling

…the Fortnight for Freedom, the grassroots phase of their campaign to gain official religious status for hospitals, universities, and social service agencies they neither control nor support financially. That status, as has been widely noted, would exempt these organizations from the administration’s requirement that an employer’s health insurance plan cover contraceptives, with no copay or other costs to the employee. But the longer-term goal is…

Secular Group Calls On Obama To “Keep His Word” on Faith-Based Office

By Sarah Posner

…stian group to adhere to its non-discrimination policy in order to achieve official campus recognition, World Vision was quick to issue a press release expressing disappointment in the outcome, but asserting that the decision would not in any way erode its ability to discriminate for religious reasons. World Vision vowed to “continue to vigorously defend its constitutional and statutory freedom to remain faith-based through its staffing decisions,…