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Why So Many American Christians Don’t Understand Protest

…g to bow to them, instead creating a new holy space where the oppressed go free. What better moment to consider our place as faithful Christians than during this season of Advent? In a time when American Christianity has perhaps sold its soul for 30 pieces of silver, taking refuge in the security of a violent empire, we would do well to remember that our good news first came as an act of divine protest in the body of a poor, brown baby born in a b…

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“Traditional values.” Tom DeLay. Jesus loves low, low prices! Just another day in Texas.

…ney laundering and sentenced to three years in prison, although he remains free on appeal. The TCC and TCCRI have advocated for, among other things, “Western Civilization” centers at state universities. For Christian, at least, “civilization” is only for straight people. In a story about last week’s debate, the Austin Statesman reported that Christian maintained, “If they’re [universities] going to pay for one, they need to balance it with the oth…

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Trump’s SOTU Address Was a Christian Nationalist Dog Whistle

…ludes the following line (emphases mine): In reaffirming our heritage as a free nation, we must remember that America has always been a Christian nation. Time magazine’s transcript, meanwhile, reflects what the president actually said: In reaffirming our heritage as a free Nation, we must remember that America has always been a frontier nation. It’s entirely possible that the speech wasn’t deliberately edited; that Trump, who’s famous for ad-libbi…

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What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

…d used today to bully, circumscribe, panic, or oppress.  Americans deserve better. Certainly bigotry is profoundly contrary to the values we aspire to. More pragmatically, Islamophobia is just plain bad for America. If we want to understand Islam, we should have accurate information—we wouldn’t want those who keep our country safe relying on people who have no idea what they’re talking about.   If we want to know how to navigate a tumultuous Musli…

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The Battle for the Meaning of Religious Freedom Day

…a long time. Indeed, what comes up first in a Google search for Religious Freedom Day is ReligiousFreedomDay.com, the work of a California-based Christian right agency called Gateways to Better Education. This group is part of a wider movement that seeks to evangelize children in public schools—as detailed in Katherine Stewart’s book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. Gateways states that they work w…

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American Infidel: Robert Ingersoll Was the “Great Agnostic” of the (Last) Gilded Age

…and music, was devoted to his wife and daughters, and gave his money away freely. Jacoby makes a convincing case that Ingersoll belongs to the egalitarian and humanistic thread of American secularism rather than Social Darwinist thread. And, in fact, Ingersoll stoutly rejected the contempt for the “lower orders” (immigrants, people of color) that was being shown in the 1880s and onward by leading Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham…

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Is Accreditation of Religious Institutions a “Farce”?

…oard of overstepping the First Amendment and infringing on their rights to free religious exercise and free speech.” Among the colleges and seminaries that spurn regional accreditation, many justify their decision by citing freedom from governmental oversight, a position compatible with the conservative mentality often dominant at such institutions. Ideologically consistent, this claim has the ancillary benefit of helping its makers dodge the cost…

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The ‘Common Sense’ Argument Against Marriage Equality

…r and their children.” (The infertile, asexual, post-menopausal, and child-free by choice need not apply.) Anderson echoes precisely what same-sex proponents have been saying all along with regard to children: that the desire to marry is in fact a desire to be more traditional. As Frank Bruni put it, gays and lesbians are no longer cultural rebels; “We’re aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservativ…

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Are Religious Leaders Prepared to Engage “Religious Liberty” Questions Post-Hobby Lobby?

…ams, and social media outreach efforts that critically engage the tensions between freedom and liberty in religious practice and American citizenship; take a stand in the pulpit for the legal and moral place of competing religious convictions; explicitly honor the lives of women and children by calling for the provision of adequate healthcare and family planning services unhindered by an employer’s religious convictions; affirm the right of indivi…

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Barack Obama, Pro-Life Hero

…g initiatives, conservative activists are finding they may apply religious freedom to any number of disparate issues. Apart from trivializing what ought to be a sacred liberal right, the widespread deployment of religious freedom arguments indicates a weak rhetorical posture. In each of the cases mentioned above, opponents of a particular piece of legislation embraced religious freedom only after other strategies failed to persuade. Such arguments…

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