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Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…for Reproductive Justice who did their own lobbying, and ultimately a good number of legislators themselves. It seems that’s when the personhood battle really became a power struggle between the personhood lobby and the Republican leadership. With so many amendments and so much public controversy surrounding the bill, the Republican leadership opted not to bring the bill forward. This raised the ire of Personhood USA and Oklahomans for Life, who c…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…to date was HPA for the Win in June 2010, during which HPA mobilized huge numbers of online voters from across fandoms and online communities to win a $250,000 grant from the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Then there’s the current “Deathly Hallows” campaign, which centers on the release date of a Harry Potter movie—in this case, The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on Nov. 19. The Deathly Hallows campaign will run for nine months—the time bet…

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…then, Mormons for Marriage founder Laura Compton writes, there have been a number of subtle but observable changes in Mormon positioning on same-sex marriage, including: – The Church Handbook of Instructions no longer includes a request that church members should lobby governments to deny same-sex marriage rights (and rites) via legislative actions. – LDS rhetoric about same-sex marriage rights is shifting to focus on the need to protect religious…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement have called themselves “Patriots” or “Christian Patriots.” They may be Identity Christians, Neo-Nazis, or adhere to racist forms of Paganism; they may even be secular but still expect to participate in a revolution that will destroy the federal government and create a collective salvation for white Americans. People who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” or “Freemen” believe they have deciphered th…

6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks

By David R. Brockman

…es patterns of imbalance, in the textbooks. While these problems spanned a number of religious traditions, I will discuss two representative examples, Christianity and Islam—the two religions about which the most heat was generated in the textbook debate. 5. Pro-Christian, Anti-Muslim Slant As I mentioned in item 1, the curriculum standards (TEKS) promote Christianity over other religions. Sadly, I found a similar pro-Christian slant in many world…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…lic Society of Midwives, he declared that the “observance of the sterile period can be licit” if done for serious reasons. He said, however, that serious indications for limiting births included “medical, eugenic, economic, and social” reasons, which went far beyond the reasons traditionally accepted by even the most liberal of Catholic theologians for refraining from sex to limit family size: extreme poverty or a serious threat to the woman’s hea…

Feeding on the Faithful: How Supernatural Thinking Empowered the Third Reich

By Eric Kurlander

…s to reach a wide public, one has to strike the right balance between historiographical complexity/originality and accessibility, between exhaustively documented, archival-based primary research and a story-driven narrative unencumbered by too much nuance or detail. If I’ve erred a bit toward scholarly documentation, it is because the topic really deserved serious inquiry. I still worked to make the narrative and argument as accessible as possible…

The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…Prison Fellowship, joined neo-conservative scholar Michael Horowitz and various feminist groups to lobby for the bill. In 2005, The Nation took a close look at the TVPA and referred to it as having a “split personality,” which Debbie Nathan, the author of the piece, attributed to “the split group that created it.” More recently, old-guard culture warrior Focus on the Family joined the effort. Under new president Jim Daly, they recently launched a…

How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

By Sunnivie Brydum

…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…

Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…