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3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…holic bishops howled like the world was coming to an end. Dire warnings about the future of religious liberty were issued on a regular basis by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, then-head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who personally went to the White House to complain to Obama. A special committee was formed. Legislators were lobbied. Lay Catholics were called on to protest. A scorching letter was read aloud by bishops at masses across the cou…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…five categories in the latest manual. Category 1 comprises bills and resolutions about God and country; notably posting In God We Trust displays in public schools. These bills were intended to rally the two-dozen state legislative Prayer Caucuses that the CPCF had organized with what they viewed as easy wins. They also wanted to set up opponents with an ambush of negative publicity, advising, “If any legislator opposes this, it will be helpful to…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…conomy, they’re a welcome reprieve. And it’s okay to draw religious lessons from them, if that’s what you’re inclined to do. But those lessons should not be about a vindictive and arbitrary God who favors some athletes over others, but should be about the capacity of religion and spirituality to cause us to be better people, however we understand what that means. What’s miraculous is not how God has favored the righteous, but how religion has insp…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…resa, or Karl Barth. That lack of assurance is humbling—and important—and puts you out of the business of judging others, I think. ++++++++++ The Role of Religion in US Politics Is it too late for another Top Ten list for 2008? Check out Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s “Top Ten List of Church–State Stories for 2008,” where “The Role of Religion in the Presidential Campaign,” occupies the top spot. And if such longtime religio…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…ered to these “criminals” – workers whose only real crime was working without proper authorization in order to feed their families. Until fairly recently, if a worker was found to be working in the country without proper authorization, the worker would simply be deported. In Postville, workers who were desperate to support their families weren’t given that option. They were told they had three options: They could plead guilty to knowingly using a…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…igious education and to the full function and exercise of their religious duties, without any form of direct or indirect interference by the state. Catholic Church: Francis says church owes apology to gays; Benedict says he broke up ‘gay lobby’ Last Sunday, Pope Francis demonstrated his penchant for generating news with off the cuff remarks with reporters aboard the papal plane. Francis was asked about comments made a few days earlier by German Ca…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…ion in its national leadership. Dailey ensured that Bethel would keep its autonomy, but she signed on with the House of God because it gave her a national platform to share her message. Around the time her first grandchild, Eli Aronoff, was born in 1960, Dailey spent several weeks on preaching tours each year. Exactly what she preached in those years is unclear, but it clearly increasingly challenged Christianity. According to one family legend, a…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…say about Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…ds; i.e., they are quite sympathetic to the justice claims of LGBT people but worried about stirring controversy. Rev. Steve Clapp, whose Midwest-based Christian Community organization studies and supports moderate clergy and congregations, originated the term “silent friends” in a book he wrote with that title. Clapp says that he enthusiastically welcomes Believe Out Loud as a “tremendous new movement that will give these conflicted clergy friend…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…n culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level of gun violence. To me the question that grows more acute daily is how to amplify…