Religion Dispatches
The New Apostolic Reformation has been in the news a great deal since Rick Perry first announced his prayer rally, The Response. Sarah Posner has an investigative journalist’s view of this movement, its place in religious movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, and in politics. Here she is in conversation with Anthea Butler, a scholar of American religious history.
Jeffress thinks it’s fine to interrogate candidates’ religious beliefs. Indeed there may be times when it is legitimate to ask whether a candidate’s religious positions would have a direct impact on policy. Religious Right activist David Barton has declared that the Bible is opposed to progressive taxation, capital gains taxes, collective bargaining, and the minimum wage. It’s legitimate to ask whether candidates who praise Barton’s work—such as Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich—share those opinions. Similarly, when a presidential candidate like Bachmann calls a Christian Reconstructionist thinker her “mentor,” it is not religious bigotry to ask whether she shares his views about the Constitution and the roles of religion and government in society. But questioning the authenticity or soundness of a candidate’s religious views, for example to have Barton and Glenn Beck rail against what they believe are President Obama’s religious views on the nature of salvation, seems far less appropriate—or useful.
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At the end of 2011, in a sign of what’s to come, the U.S. Bishops warned the Obama administration to amend a regulation on contraception in its health care legislation or stand accused of religious discrimination.
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Santorum banking on the Duggars.
Read MoreDo Christian women really struggle with the idea of a female president?
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This year has marked, I believe, the beginning of the end of the war between science and religion. Creationism cannot last. The New Atheists are now old (or departed). And between these camps the middle ground continues to expand. Indeed, many folks have been hard at it, doing a new kind of peace work. Some have done it intentionally, some have not. Outliers, both atheist and religious hardliners, continue to wage battle but they look increasingly irrelevant.
Read MoreOpen DoorsUSA doesn’t want to talk about Islamophobia.
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Gingrich’s Christian Right training.
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Last time pro wrestling mogul Linda McMahon sought Connecticut’s senate seat her opponents used WWE connections to steroids and displays of sex and sexism to attack her. But if you want to make headway with the US electorate there’s a much better avenue depicted on the wrestling stage: religion.
Read MoreIn speech at Liberty University, Bachmann conflates knowing Jesus with freedom from socialism.
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