Religion Dispatches
…religious groups are boosting their visibility in pride celebrations. The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein noted the trend on the eve of D.C.’s Capital Pride celebration this past weekend: Organizers of this weekend’s Capital Pride named 14 faith-based groups participating in Sunday’s festival for the first time. They include Baptist, Lutheran and Quaker churches as well as the country’s largest Buddhist denomination, a Conservative synagogue…
Read More…18% of tea partiers do. This mirrored a similar finding in a University of Washington poll, which found that only 18% of Washington state tea partiers believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry (as compared to 41% of all voters). In other words, tea partiers are very much like the Republican Party on gay marriage. What’s the difference between a Tea Partier and a Republican? Well, of course, it’s hard to tell. But if you w…
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…g that Root’s speech won’t make any major media coverage of the rally. The Washington Post will follow the horse race, noting Trump’s endorsement of a senate candidate. Both CNN and the New York Times will add wonkiness, highlighting a Trump pledge to end taxes on tips for hospitality workers, as if policy had brought the thousands out screaming for Trump in triple degree sun. The proper political press rarely pays much attention to Trump’s warm-u…
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According to last week’s Washington Times, the central committee of the Republican Party in Iowa denied Senator Charles Grassley, the state’s senior elected Republican, a place on the state’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Iowa Christian Alliance, the state’s most powerful Religious Right organization, has long exerted an outsized influence over the state’s Republican Party, but now it controls a majo…
Read More…es governmental affairs and is the chief lobbyist of the 30-million-member Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Evangelicals, this year he was named by TIME magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people, he’s a Republican, and he’s a leader in the Creation Care movement—a Christian evangelical response to global warming. He is Richard Cizik and he’s a longtime friend of Sen. John McCain. These days, Cizik says that he doesn’…
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At his “Restoring Honor” rally last August, speaking from the spot in Washington DC where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, Glenn Beck and guests blamed liberals for the state of the nation and the world. Joining him in the seat of American power was Sarah Palin, who, with her signal lack of originality and predilection for repetition, told the crowd: “We must restore America and restore her honor.” For this year’s “Res…
Read More…y-sponsored debate tonight in Tampa, Florida. A Bachmann adviser tells the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” Perry did not invent the Ponzi scheme analogy for Social Security; back in 1995, economist James Glassman (he who wro…
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…iblical Queen Esther who saved her people from destruction. When he was in Washington, I asked Engle whether young evangelicals were looking for the kind of revival he was preaching about, in light of heightened interest in issues beyond abortion and gay marriage. “I don’t mean the old time Pentecostal [revival],” Engle replied, “but real returning to God with wholehearted love. [Young evangelicals] return to scriptures as the foundation. And when…
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…tion in the U.S. (no mention in the New York Times, a brief article in the Washington Post) is striking, some would say disgraceful. In the U.K., the case got a bit more attention—see Nick Cohen’s impassioned article in The Observer: “The Deafening Silence of a Good Man’s Death.” Rafiq Tagi, a physician and journalist, had been a persistent critic of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian government and of the influence of Iranian clerics in Azeri politics an…
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…sort and Convention Center in Maryland, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. While the American Conservative Union’s annual gathering has long served as a veritable who’s-who of far-right conservative movements, this year’s guest list is particularly star-studded, with nearly a dozen speakers from across the Trump administration scheduled to appear. Vice President Mike Pence will address the crowd tonight, and President Donald Trump…
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