Religion Dispatches
…upstaged lately by a politicized notion of “religious liberty.” Christian Freedom refers to the Apostle Paul’s distinction between things that are permissible and things that are helpful. Saved by grace, Christians are free to explore all things. But some things have harmful effects, and should therefore be avoided. Marijuana, the CT editors believe, is distinctly unhelpful. So to be specific, Crouch says this: We at Christianity Today believe Ch…
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…helpfully references Tyler Stovall’s important work on the historical link between freedom and whiteness. Unfortunately, Anker fails to take sufficient notice of Stovall’s primary thesis, which addresses what is often considered the “paradox” at the heart of the founding of this great republic. His thesis maintains that the subjugation of people of color from the Enlightenment forward is no anomaly or paradox within the overall march of freedom bu…
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…abeled bigoted and narrow-minded. Yet many clamor to deny Muslins the very free exercise rights for which Sekulow, and now also his son Jordan, litigated, with the ACLJ leading the fight against the nonexistent effort by Muslims to take over America by implementing Sharia. We’re seeing the rhetoric around “religious freedom” as Christian privilege, the denial of which is framed as persecution from the Trump Administration—but there are at least tw…
Read More…on between church and state. The bishops would love to have the separation between church and state we thought we enjoyed just a few months ago, when we were free to run Catholic institutions in conformity with the demands of the Catholic faith, when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not, when the law protected rather than crushed conscience. The state is making itself into a church. Oh, to be able to p…
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…e about the biography of groups or the nation; nostalgia lies in the plane between the personal and the collective memory. In this light MAGA was the perfect slogan for a figure like Donald Trump. Comments from a Proud Boys Chat Group on Telegram Using language and memes that promote the idea of the degeneration of the nation at the hands of feminism or gender rights, nationalists are positioned as the opposition to progress and create a stigmatiz…
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…at all Indians must appropriate and live under. Together, the RHC and Modi promote a narrow vision of Hinduism in the guise of Indian culture locally and abroad. Modi’s government has increasingly used the country’s broad and vague laws restricting free speech to stifle many forms of dissent, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. In addition to providing vague “values” Trump allegedly shares with Hindu Americans—“hard work, education…
Read More…south—wait, did someone cheer?—would be to break apart a growing alliance between the left and minority communities of color by using people of color, about whom it’s a lot harder to argue ‘you’re just poorly disguised Southern white supremacists,’ to argue your points. But that would mean talking to people who are lying to you, like I am right now. Thank you, and God bless America. *For least accuracy and most patriotism, please pronounce ‘Ira…
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…f online content, a number of news articles did manage to connect the dots between Ferguson and the discriminatory housing policies put in place after World War II. As I have argued before, new technologies tend to augment existing systems of privilege. Yet there is reason to hope that digital media may yet catalyze a more just future. Dear Prudence Before jumping from his capsule, with all eyes watching, Baumgartner remarked, “Sometimes you have…
Read More…uity, women’s autonomy in reproductive health choices, and the right to be free from religious discrimination in the public sphere. The fact that McConnell readily agreed to participate in Mohler’s “issues forums,” even while he and Grimes were negotiating the terms of their debates, certainly raises the specter of political collusion. McConnell is on record saying that he wants Lincoln-Douglas style debates—no questions from the media or the publ…
Read More…a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual performance—the zone. It was even more intense…
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