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Prosperity Preachers: Where Are They Now?

By Jonathan L. Walton

…to say as the American economy tumbles and their parishioners watch their net worth evaporate like the mid-morning dew? I mean they have taught us for the past few decades that by faith we can transcend the economy of the natural realm. If you walk with God and live the higher life in Christ, you don’t have to worry about the “world’s order.” And they have encouraged churchgoers to believe that poverty and economic lack is a mindset to be overcom…

The Bishops Did Send a Message with Their Vote on Biden and Communion; Are We Sure It Was The One They Intended?

By Daniel Schultz

…conomic questions. They all seem to agree that a responsible social safety net is a good thing, and beyond that there’s some diversity in viewpoint. Same with immigration: they all believe that immigrants should be treated with dignity and respect. After that, there are a lot of different views. But where you get the real differences is in priorities. What’s more important: abortion or immigrant rights? Most bishops would try to say “both, equally…

Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Obama’s Faith-Based Initiative

By Sarah Posner

…e families and fathers in their communities.” One 2011 awardee is the Care Net Crisis Pregnancy Center in Rapid City, South Dakota. Another is the Sav-A-Life Pregnancy Test Center (no mystery about its position, right?) in Birmingham, Alabama. On the National Fatherhood Initiative website, Sav-A-Life describes its mission as “to help men and women embrace the truth of God’s Word as they make life-affirming decisions about their unborn child.” Aha….

Believing in Tiger Woods

By Mark Hulsether

…g skills. Perhaps his “sacred aura” could be supplemented by his sexual magnetism? But, then again, this made him an unsuitable bourgeois husband. Should we consider this one step forward and one step back, for a net wash somewhat like a back-to-back hole-in-one and double bogey? I do not have the answers, only questions. If godlike prowess is now (under the conditions of 21st-century neoliberalism) also measured by endorsement deals, and if endor…

Tony Perkins: Soldiers Will Quit if Gays Can Serve Openly

By Daniel Schultz

…side the debatable assumption that the draft is a bad thing (it could be a net positive, especially with a German-style alternative service proviso), does Perkins really think that the same men and women who will walk exposed into enemy fire to save their buddies would be scared to serve next to a gay man or lesbian? Really? Well, not exactly. As butch as Perkins’ understanding of how the military works is, it has less to do with the physical prot…

CPAC Conservatives Shun “Crazy Bigot” Gaffney

By Sarah Posner

…o investigate “creeping shari’ah,” talked to the conspiracy web site World Net Daily, claiming “that CPAC has come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.” Gaffney’s exhibit A is Suhail Khan, a member of the American Conservative Union board, which annually sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference. WND’s piece is based on Gaffney’s charges “that Islamism has infi…

Jesus Said Punch Up, Not Down: Why William Barber’s Attack on the Religious Right May Not Be What It Seems

By Daniel Schultz

…ame thing I hear whenever I cite scripture in support of the social safety net: God never says government should provide for the poor! (Which is true, though she never says the opposite, either.) Like Harris, many conservative Christians believe—truly, almost as an article of faith—that government programs are an ineffective means of poverty relief at best, and at worst, a counter-productive or even predatory response to the poor. When I say “an a…

Why Conservatives are Turning on Beck

By Sarah Posner

…tion, and about how the film being promoted by a former colleague of World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, who was one of the first conservative writers to jump on the conspiracy train: lest you forget, that line of thinking goes, Mohamed ElBaradei, while head of the IAEA, let Iran off the hook on its nuclear ambitions; ElBaradei’s OK with the Muslim Brotherhood; therefore he must be behind the plot to install a nuclear-armed-Islamic-caliphate-that-will-…

Mitt Romney’s Best-Known Mormon Critic Tells it All. One Last Time.

By Joanna Brooks

…ave come to be represented by a man who has no interest in a social safety net and blames those in need for being in poverty or without work. Mormons don’t believe that. He is not us. I get requests from Mormons around the country to do service projects in Gulu and work side by side with Ugandans. We are very clear about not imposing our ideas on the Ugandans. We have a local staff from the community who have worked all their lives with child sol…

“Those Federer Moments”: Sports, Sex, and the Gender of Grace

By Franklin Strong

…writes. “But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at that down there. Look at that.” Wimbledon that year was a religious experience, Wallace says, a kind of grace, an experience of another, better world. And the thing about grace is that it’s inherently good; it’s never inappropriate, even when it springs from a flawed source. For all of the probl…