Religion Dispatches
…more outlandish antics. Charles Mitchell, who blogs at evangelicalsformitt.com but is not formally affiliated with the Romney campaign, said, “We don’t just want you to get up there and pound your foot and say, ‘I’m pro-life!’ ‘Let’s go after gay marriage!’” He also said that evangelicals like him are frustrated by publicity stunts like Judge Roy Moore’s defiance of a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse. “Where di…
Read More…ding the names of family members to be posthumously baptized. If my Jewish community is outraged about posthumous baptism, my LGBT community is equally outraged about the Mormons—the folks who once brought us polygamy and the doctrine that black people are cursed by God—suddenly becoming the defenders of family values at the expense of gay people. It’s still LDS doctrine that homosexuality is a choice, and, of course, the church has bankrolled ant…
Read More…flew Sarah Palin around for her 2009 book tour, and regularly has the tail numbers of his planes blocked at Flightware.com. What does he have to hide? Franklin Graham’s appearances are coordinated to help out whichever Republican conservative candidate he perceives to be on top at any given time. Like his father, he wants to be the prayer partner of Presidents. But Franklin, frankly, is too crass for his own good. Crowing about his Christianity on…
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…a nationwide billboard campaign dubbed “TooManyAborted.com” that targeted communities of color with billboards characterizing abortion as “black genocide.” Mother Jones recently reported that a House Bill advocating the prohibition of “race-selection abortions” has been proposed to Republican lawmakers. The Bill argues that “abortion is the leading cause of death in the black community.” Protecting Minority Life Along those lines, the current fur…
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…te (38%) in Florida is virtually the reverse of South Carolina, where they comprised 65% of voters, and which is why, in part, Romney is headed toward victory here tomorrow. At the Romney rally, the verdict on Gingrich was mixed. Liz Reiman, a Romney voter from Jacksonville, said she had been “intrigued” with Gingrich, whom she called “stunning and sometimes disturbing.” But, she concluded, he was “too volatile.” Catherine Baum, who said she was n…
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…is questionable (would your parents have met?). The post goes on to list a number of world events, inventions, and creations that the writer claims never would have happened if Jesus had been aborted, including: there would have been no Cathedrals in Europe, no Sistine Chapel, and “further, no Vatican at all;” Bach and Mozart wouldn’t have been as awesome as they were; Columbus wouldn’t have discovered America; “the Constitution, the Bill of Right…
Read More…efeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and threatened Mormon feminists with excommunication. It was the Salt Lake Tribune’s award-winning religion reporter Peggy Stack who first told the story in 2008 of Bishop Romney and his interactions with Boston-area Mormon feminists. (The New York Times’s Sheryl Stolberg followed Stack’s trail of sources for her solid piece on Romney as bishop last month.) The Post’s story adds nuance through in-depth interview…
Read More…Team Atheist members have reached a $3 million milestone recently. And the number is growing. I checked this morning and it was up to $3.3 million now with almost 14,000 members. Meanwhile, Kiva Christian is up to almost $2 million in loans with 6,500 members. Team Atheist, which comprises atheists, agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers, secular humanists and the general non-religious, has the motto, “We loan because we care about the suffering of hum…
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…everywhere: Night 2- The story of the Maccabees as told by the Rugrats, complete with pop-up scrolls… Night 3- Elmo learns all about Hanukkah Night 4- The Nanny tries to keep her family together for the first night of Hanukkah: Night 5- Southpark’s Mr. Hankey sings a Hanukkah song: Night 6- The Holiday Armadillo brings Hanukkah to Friends: Night 7- Hanukkah Harry saves Easter on Saturday Night Live: Night 8- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart offe…
Read More…some seen in loincloths. With a lineup like that, and with Christianmingle.com (a Christian dating site in the wake of some bad press), being a primary sponsor of the show, the audience seems clear, and the first night’s ratings were pretty good, if not off the charts. But so far the effect is far murkier than the intent, as I will detail in future posts. Thus far, the show appears to take too many liberties with the text to satisfy the most bibl…
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