Search for "evangelical left"

Culture Warriors Surrender, But Battles Rage On

By Patricia Miller

…a limited view of exactly who is driving the culture wars. It’s true that evangelicals like Moore have called for less focus on the culture wars and a renewed emphasis on the gospel. But evangelicals are only part of the equation. The U.S. Catholic bishops, who have been more influential in sparking the culture wars around “religious liberty” than any other entity, haven’t backed down one bit. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops just released…

Film Follows Teen Exiles from Polygamous Sect

By Becky Garrison

…n we met the kids, we really got their story. They were like, “Oh wow, you left too.” How did you maintain your objectivity while filming this documentary? TM: I think any documentary filmmaker walks that line between objectivity and being a human being. There were times when we became really ingrained in their lives. These kids looked to us almost as surrogate parents in a lot of ways. JM: The social workers were asking us to help them. So we bec…

Want Marriage Equality? Follow the Money

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ttle [against homosexuality and homosexuals], there are no moral absolutes left for this nation.” The purpose of the meeting was not to energize the superstars of the anti-gay movement, but to bolster a grassroots campaign that would take hold – and some 15 years later – has put deep roots into political and religious institutions in our nation. I am certainly not a buff of conspiracy theories, but just a gander at the sheer amount of grassroots o…

Spinning the Faith Forum

By Mark Hulsether

…Beliefnet that Obama is going to have to do more than ‘talk faith’ to win evangelical votes, and compares an evangelical Christian voting for a pro-choice politician to a Jew voting for a Holocaust denier.” When I followed the link to Beliefnet (which, by the way, became part of the FOX news empire last year), I found something more ambiguous. Walsh was paraphrasing Warren’s response to a question from beliefnet about McCain, not Obama. “How much…

The Broken Promise of Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘The Goop Lab’

By Daniel Albert Joslyn

…en. Their impulses make sense: to fight alienation, TGL, much like the New Left before it, appeals to a language of liberation. In the lead-in to every episode, a confident Paltrow declares, much like the “hippies” before her, that her goal is “total freedom.” Swimming in freezing water promises to liberate our immune systems; female masturbation promises to liberate our bodies; and psychedelics, energy healing and intuition promise to liberate ou…

Rising to Heaven in a Secular Rapture: Trump’s Golden Promises

By Eric C. Miller

…e the facts out of it, you take the moral judgments out of it, and you are left with a feeling. That, in a way, is the goal here. That is what the book leads to—the discovery that, on the other side of the empathy wall, this is what people feel. So to empathize with it is to imagine the feeling of being pushed back in line, disrespected, and ultimately, humiliated. So that’s how I came to empathize with the people I studied. It’s not to say that I…

Christianity Today counsels “patience” on Uganda’s anti-gay law

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…Baptist jailed there told one news outfit: “What we want is simple: to be left alone to pray to God and speak to others of God without any obstruction. We don’t want any privileges or any discrimination in our favor.” The gays and lesbians of Uganda could say the same thing. They simply want to be left alone to form the adult, consensual relationships that they seek, and to speak of their lives and live their lives without any obstruction. They s…

Hate Speech Leads to Violence: In Wake of Abortion Doc Murder, Religious Leaders Skirt the Issue

By Bill Berkowitz

…d as “one of the villains of history.” “I grieve for Dr. Tiller because he left this life, perhaps without proper preparation to face God,” Terry said. “The thought of him leaving this life with blood on his hands for having killed so many thousands of children and not having been prepared to meet his maker is a dreadful, terrifying thought.” Terry appeared to be verbalizing what others, more “respected” Christian Right leaders couldn’t. Since Ter…

Oh, For God’s Sake

By Daniel Schultz

…nt’s words don’t match exactly the NIV, as MMFA reported. He seems to have left out the phrase “they will renew their strength.” This is somewhat embarrassing. “Gotcha,” however, is neither a functional equivalent of a smear campaign, nor a moral one. Media Matters mistakenly attributed the scripture quote to the NIV; I saw nothing obviously wrong with that, and failed to notice the omission. Shame on me, but I’m not the one charging a sitting pre…

Rites, Rituals, and the King

By Amina Wadud

…on him?”, and the companions said, “No our Prophet, there would be no dirt left on him.” “That,” he said, “is what happens to the soul, when one prays five times a day, no dirt is left on it.” Perhaps some one forgot to tell Osama. But actually, I have heard a much clearer explanation. It’s pretty simple too, if you think about. The performance of salah is more than just bopping your head up and down against the ground five times a day, looking li…