Religion Dispatches
…other Tea Party favorites for Senate Sharron Angle (Nevada), Marco Rubio (Florida), J.D. Hayworth (Arizona), David Vitter (Louisiana), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and Jim DeMint (South Carolina), as well as eight House candidates. The Angle campaign embraced the endorsement, with her spokesperson saying, “Not only is Mrs. Angle unafraid of guns, but she is also unafraid to stand up against those who would attempt to deny the legal rights of other gun…
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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…the planned September 11 Qur’an burning by a fringe pastor in Gainesville, Florida, issuing the following statement yesterday: “A key tenet of our faith is to accord everyone the freedom to worship as they choose. It is regrettable that anyone would regard the burning of any scriptural text as a legitimate form of protest or disagreement.” Which, if I may translate from the culturally understated, modest, and pragmatic institutional language of th…
Read More…early 75% raised their hands. Overwhelmingly over the age of 50 (and North Florida, unlike much of the state, has a median age in the 40s) and pretty evenly split male and female, this struck me as the kind of “community organizing” for which conservatives ridiculed President Obama during the presidential campaign. In fact, this tea party group has two women who will come to your home and help you organize a neighborhood tea party modeled along th…
Read More…imaries in Nevada, Kentucky, Utah, Colorado, as well as the non-primary in Florida (where Marco Rubio chased Gov. Charlie Crist out of the primary—and out of the Republican Party). All of the candidates supported by GOA-PVF were opposed by the Republican establishment in their respective primaries. And all of these candidates agree with Gun Owners of America that it is not enough simply to defeat anti-gunners in elections. They must also be replac…
Read More…paid any attention when they did it—but this cartoon-mustached preacher in Florida gets on the Today show and gets coverage in all the major media when simply threatens to do it. Here’s a media lesson for Phelps: timing is everything, Freddie. If you had threatened to burn Qur’ans in the middle of the Park 51 saga, pumped by the media during the silly season before midterm elections, perhaps you would have finally had your 15 minutes or more to sp…
Read MoreIn the wake of media reports that Terry Jones, the Gainesville, Florida pastor who was going to burn a Qur’an on Saturday, had agreed to not proceed with his plan because the promoters of the Park51 project had agreed to move it to a different location, Sharif El-Gamal, Chairman and CEO of SoHo Properties, which owns the site, today issued this statement to RD: It is untrue that the community center known as Park51 in lower Manhattan is being mov…
Read More…p in Lousiville, Kentucky quite peacefully. Is the BBC anti-Christian? The Florida pastor who had planned to burn Qur’ans on 9/11 has instigated protests in Indonesia and the threat of a flag-burning protest in Great Britain. Indian officials have called for a media blackout of the event. Meanwhile, his own daughter has joined the list of folks condemning the event. She called his church a “cult” that uses “mental violence.” Not to be left out in…
Read More…ing a boiling point, and it’s not just because of the plan of Gainesville, Florida pastor Terry Jones — plastered on the front page of more U.S. newspapers than his church has members — to burn the Qur’an on the 9/11 anniversary. The crisis is not the Qur’an burning itself. As Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America noted the other day, while the Qur’an burning is “hurtful” and “alarming,” millions of Muslims around the w…
Read More…arson at a planned Tennesse mosque site and the planned Quran burning at a Florida church on September 11, a coalition religious groups will meet this afternoon with Attorney General Eric Holder, as part of an effort to urge the Obama administration to do more to protect the religious freedom and safety of Muslims in the United States. In a meeting with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez on August 30, the Baptist Joint Committee…
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