Religion Dispatches
…led for Anchorage, Alaska for the weekend of September 13, which was being promoted by Wasilla Bible Church, the home church of Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP’s nominee vice presidential nominee. According to piece by Wayne Beson, the executive director of Truth Wins Out, that appeared in the Falls Church News-Press Online, Wasilla Bible Church “was caught promoting” the LWO conference through a Bible insert that read, “You’ll be encouraged by the powe…
Read More…without any religious exemptions, were scheduled to host a conference call today at 11:30 a.m. They postponed it after it became clear the White House was set to announce the accommodation today. The letter says the religious conscience of women and the separation of church and state support the requirement for coverage without an exemption for religious institutions. It’s clear that the White House was not seeking to appease the U.S. Conference o…
Read More
…can’t be applied to the loving, committed gay and lesbian relationships of today. Then you turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially chapters 14 and 15, to propose a way to live together in a “third way” and make the church not just “affirming” of LGBT people, but fully inclusive. I just assumed there was a well-acknowledged category of “disputable matters” (like those found in Romans 14 and 15). I grew up in the Jesus Freak movement of the…
Read More
…it’s about how you look? About the actual color of your skin? So most Jews today are ‘white’ & have ‘white privilege’ but some don’t? Who decides? Are Stephen Spielberg & Woody Allen not white? My point is that these identities only seem to apply when woke people say they do.” Metaxas, making very little sense here, is clearly attempting to wiggle out of the mess he’s gotten himself in. Perhaps the best response to this tweet comes from another RD…
Read More…cent of them have a favorable view of Netanyahu, according to Pew poll out today, and conducted during the escalating controversy over the prime minister’s speech. Meanwhile, 53 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the Israeli leader, reflecting, as the Pew report explains, divides that are religious as well as partisan: “Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants have the most favorable impressions of Netanyahu (50% favorabl…
Read More
…ions, developing a theory of “family values” that often fails in practice. Today, we can point to anything from the Catholic Church’s continued refusal to ordain women, to one of the nation’s most popular pastors calling us a “pussified nation,” to fierce national debates over abortion and birth control whose implicit terms are the assertion of control over women’s bodies. Though our jurisprudence is today unlikely to cite men’s divine responsibil…
Read More…ting that “[n]one of the history Marsh cited—and none the majority details today—supports calling on citizens to pray, in a manner consonant with only a single religion’s beliefs, at a participatory public proceeding, having both legislative and adjudicatory components.” Unlike a state legislative session, town board meetings “both by design and in operation, allow citizens to actively participate in the Town’s governance—sharing concerns, airing…
Read More
…ation of its “no-gossip” policy. In fairness to Shellnutt and Christianity Today, highlighting this incident as an abuse of evangelical opposition to “gossip” is a good thing. In addition, Christianity Today should be acknowledged for calling for evangelicals to take accusations of sexual abuse seriously, when the magazine’s editors are highly aware that much of their readership will be inclined to dismiss rather than believe victims. That being s…
Read More
…fluence. This response has culminated in the position we find ourselves in today. We’ve ignored and mocked, while they’ve gathered momentum and built a contemporary movement held together by conspiracy, moral panics, and fear. The “groomer” panic we see today is a culmination of decades of adherence to conspiracy theories, that hold that women and feminists, are the ultimate weapon of the “great replacement” of white people. The seduction of sexua…
Read More
…ubtler way, in that of another prominent figure of South Carolina politics today—Nikki Haley. When Haley suggested that the Civil War was about “economic freedom”—using “States’ Rights” rhetoric—she was only the latest in a long line of Republican politicians, from Goldwater to Nixon to Ronald Reagan himself—to use pseudo-libertarian, ahistorical rhetoric to pander to voters animated by racial grievances. The Republican Party’s path is historian H…
Read More