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New Book Reveals How Faith is Like a Covert Operation for the Bush Family

By Frederick Clarkson

…haps most remarkably, John Dean, the former White House counsel who became best known as the key whistle-blower. (Continued on second page.) This, according to a just-published investigative history of the Bush political dynasty, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces that Put it in the White House, and what Their Influence Means for America (Bloomsbury Press, 2008). Author Russ Baker shows, among other things, that Poppy Bush’s…

You Gotta Have Faith-Based Politics

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…idge, Massachusetts. According to the press release on the White House Web site, the new Office will have four priorities: * The Office’s top priority will be making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete. * It will be one voice among several in the administration that will look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need…

Prison as Resurrection

By Caleb Smith

…ome together in the image of the cell as a space of redemption. One of the best parts of working on the book was getting to know Jim. He read the work in progress, and he was terrifically warm and generous. I visited his studio in Brooklyn, saw the models he’s been working with lately, and learned how a great visual artists handles the ideas that I usually encounter through the medium of language. Is there a book out there you wish you had written…

RD10Q: Holy Hullabaloos: A Fun Book on Church and State

By Jay Wexler

…small green bunny on his shoulder in the book. But it’s on the book’s Web site if you want to see it, along with various other footnotes and paragraphs that my wise editors made me cut. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? There are so many. One of the biggest ones is that the Supreme Court has banished religion from public life by banning school prayer and the like. This is absolutely not true. Private individuals and or…

AIDS Progress is Paradoxical

By Susan Henking

…What’s wrong here? Perhaps the same thing that is wrong when we see rising numbers in various populations globally and locally? Wedding Bells and Decriminalization And yet, not all the news is depressing. Not even all the news at the intersection of AIDS/HIV and religion is depressing. American governments and courts are hard at work legalizing same-sex marriage which, despite the cynic in me that thinks marriage equality involves joining the cons…

Angels & Demons: America’s Preeminent Pop Theologian Takes on Religion and Science

By Nathan Schneider

…saac Newton and, more soberly, Thomas Jefferson. Much of 19th-century Anglophone theology stood in awe of what zoology could teach about God’s creation. Until Darwin. Since The Origin of Species appeared in 1859, there’s been little use hoping for convergence. Europe has fallen for secular scientism, and the United States for semi-closeted creationism. The best one can expect is a habitable truce. So where is Dan Brown’s confidence coming from? De…

By the Way: “Ten Commandments Judge” To Be Alabama’s Next Gov?

By Randall Balmer

…expert witnesses in the case, I testified that the First Amendment is the best friend that religion has ever had. I also argued that religion, as Roger Williams (founder of the Baptist tradition in America) predicted long ago, has flourished in this nation as nowhere else precisely because the government has stayed out of the religion business. When Judge Myron Thompson ruled (correctly) that Moore’s stunt represented a violation of the First Ame…

The Gray Lady’s Regard: Ritual and the Wedding Pages

By Kathryn Lofton

…come impetus for familial combat, and Elks Clubs find new nostalgia as the site of the First Dance. Although some may strain to find the right tune that is neither too sappy nor too obscure, this year an obvious option reveals itself. With renewed patriotism, girls (and girls) and boys (and boys) will endure the swelter, survive the photos, and finally stand up to Etta James’ “At Last.” Just like Michelle in that inaugural bridal chiffon, the ones…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…emic experts), for example, wants to restore America, according to the Web site of his Massachusetts-based ministry, “to its Bible-based foundations through preaching, teaching, and writing on America’s Christian heritage and on Christian discipleship and revival.” He also believes that Hurricane Katrina, Watergate, and the Vietnam War are the result of divine wrath. As part of his curriculum review for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills pro…

Promise Keepers 2.0: Women and Jews Invited

By J. Terry Todd

…rich and poor, men and women, and Jews and Gentiles—the necessary prerequisites for the “spiritual warfare” on the road ahead. Theocratic Crypto-Fascists? Back in the mid-1990s, Promise Keepers appeared to be mobilizing the men of evangelical America, pleasing some people and scaring the hell out of others: the stadium rally was its stock-in-trade—the praise band, the testimonies, the marriage advice, the Jumbotron video collage, the tearful reco…